The Matrix One Point Five
by WhiteFangofWar
Summary: Trinity centric story set between the first movie and Matrix Reloaded. What are the true repercussions of having 6.5 Billion people held hostage? Spoilers that lead directly into Reloaded. Completed, please review!
1. One

_The Matrix 1.5_- **One **

**-**

"My name is Neo. I have the answers you've been searching for."

Sitting not a dozen feet away from The One, the girl stared back, digesting this information slowly. She really was quite pretty, with fair brown hair flowing down her shoulders and wide blue eyes, opened wider still by what she had seen and experienced thus far.

Hiding his true emotions behind black mirror shades, the older man shivered and cursed his own nervousness. This was his first time doing this, his first time offering _the _choice to a person. Just one month ago, he had been sitting in the other chair, probably pondering many of the same things this young girl was now.

Her name was Allison. Alice for short, it was her own perceptions that had brought her to this point. Like many others Neo had seen freed lately, she possessed the ability to peer beyond the boundaries of the world- the reality- she had grown up with. For the full ten years of her life, the feelings had been too strong to ignore. They- along with Trinity- had brought her here to speak to the man who could tell her the truth.

Neo wasn't sure if he wanted to completely copy the way Morpheus had spoken to him that night, sitting here tonight, arms folded, in an identical seat with an identical case and identical glass of water on the table beside them.

Alice was too stunned to speak, so he decided to continue. "I understand that you're frightened. I was too. But I know that you can't ignore the signs. The flashes of green?"

Fearfully, she nodded. "There's something. I don't know what it is, just that there's something wrong. My mom and dad can't see it, they tell me everything's alright. But it's _not_."

For a moment, he dared to peek over at his 'bodyguard', Trinity in her usual black leather trench coat and tank top, checking to see her reaction. Trinity, being Trinity, hadn't shown an iota of emotion since bringing Alice in to meet him.

"Please, Mr. Neo", Allison said to him, stifling tears. "If you can, tell me what's wrong."

He sighed, still reordering Morpheus' own words for a much younger audience. "Alice. I can't tell you what it is you've sensed. I can only show you. Would you like that?"

Her repeated nod was immediate, filling him with guilt. "Not so fast. Before I do, I have to warn you that you might not be able to see your home or your mom or dad again… for a while. Is _that _alright?"

Before she answered, he caught himself and interrupted, opening the familiar case. "No, don't tell me. Show me. This isn't a choice to take lightly, Alice. Take the red pill if you _really_ want to know. If you don't feel you're ready, take the blue, and you can go home to your bed and sleep."

Morpheus had explained to him why he had to wear the mirror-shades at this crucial point; they blocked the greatest visible measure of a man's emotions- his eyes. Some people could take one look into them and learn more about you than you knew about yourself. Allison, while young, could still interpret the slightest tone or movement as a hint of which decision Neo favored, even if _he _didn't really know.

He had practiced in the simulator, of course, keeping emotion and bias out of his voice or manner, making it flat and businesslike. In this case, that may have frightened her more than the flashes of code she had seen.

Allison took her time, and Neo didn't mind. In his mind, it was perhaps more important to convey the absolute seriousness, and irreversibility, of the symbolic decision held in his hand. The last thing he wanted to happen was for her to choose a pill based on her own favorite color or something.

He was idly wondering exactly how to phrase it when he heard the wooden door to his left creak open. A hand of brown flesh, making a swirl motion was all the signal he and Trinity needed- their time was growing short.

He wouldn't curse- she was only ten. Hurrying her decision would manifestly unfair. So Neo sat and waited, watching her tiny hand inch out to take one of the pills.

Too late, he saw the onrush of coding before anyone else in the building could. A wave of change was cascading over the building. Trinity's panicked gasp told him that the thin glass window that had been there moments before had disappeared. "Neo…"

"I see them Trin, just a little while longer."

Allison stopped. Either his words had changed her mind, or she too had felt what was closing on their little room. No time left.

"Allison, I'm sorry but we're out of time. You can make the choice another day, we'll contact you-"

Another door, this time the big double-panel one to his right, interrupted. And this one was not welcome or subtle, bursting off the hinges and showering both of them with sawdust.

Allison screamed, and Trinity moved to pull her back from the two new arrivals. Two well-dressed men of equal stature stepped across the wreckage of the door, both sporting shades, handguns, and eerily similar brown haircuts.

Neo tightened his gaze and stepped forward. Agents. Agents Brown and Jones if he wasn't mistaken. It had been a while since he'd seen them last, during an entirely different mission to the-

"Give us the girl", Agent Jonesinterjected curtly. His voice was the same as ever, radiating more menace and anger than Neo's controlled voice did. Yet those who knew the truth could not doubt that this was the voice of a machine.

When he wasn't trying, however, Neo was _not_. "You could have at least knocked. Trin, get her to safety, I'll handle them."

Brown snorted, equally unimpressed as his partner. "Humour." By the time he finished saying that, his gun was already aimed at Trinity and Allison as they sped through the other door.

More splinters erupted around them. Neo heard Allison scream again, and moved into the path.

His next action explained why he wasn't worried about blocking gunshots aimed at people he cared about with his own _body. _Jones and Brown's shots were too close up to stop- they pierced the flesh of The One with their complete velocity.

And then, as his operator and friend had lovingly put it, 'the code got all weird'. Those few who could view the Matrix for what it truly was would see shifts in the streams designating Neo, the bullets, and the laws of physics that governed the way they interacted. The foremost was bending, reordering the last of those as he saw fit.

That was what _they_ saw. To the eyes of the two sentient programs standing before him, along with 95 of all humans on this earth, Neo's black-garbed flesh seemed to cave inwards like rubber at both impact spots, creating two small craters holding the bullets at their epicenters.

After that, they caved back outward, propelling the bullets in exactly the opposite direction. Neo did not have a hair out of place.

Both bullets failed to find their new targets, instead impacting into the wall. Still, that display alone was enough to convince Jones and Brown to quit using handguns. Instead, they attacked with their fists and feet.

Dedicated martial arts masters 30 years Neo's senior could not have stood up to that. From the moment they were inserted, Agents were made by the governing rules of the Matrix to be physically stronger and faster than anyone they might have to subdue. Up until about a month ago, those rules, just like the rules behind the operation of bullets, had remained unbroken.

Neo had broken that rule, as he had broken so many others since then. Even two against one, he moved faster and hit harder. None of Brown or Jones' attacks ever came close.

Being a programmer first, fighter second, he would never sentimentalize about programs, even sentient ones. In the end, they were nothing but data and thus had no real feelings to hurt. With the amount of time he had spent fighting Agents, he had long ago come to understand that they were only doing what they were created to do.

So he allowed himself to have a little fun. He would tease them, waiting until the last second to move out of the way. Once in a while, he would try seeing if he could get the two to hit each other. A difference in their outlooks revealed itself to him right there- Jones managed to stop himself from hitting his partner several times, the frenzied Agent Brown hit Jones repeatedly by accident… and didn't seem to care.

Finally, he decided enough was enough, dropped to the floor, and slugged both of them in the gut, dropping them both to the dusty floor in a split-second. Slowly pacing out of the room and into Link's little nest of equipment, he looked back at the two of them, still unable to stand even as their faces contorted with frustration and rage.

"Better luck next time, boys."

-

As had become routine, Neo woke up to the tingly feeling of a thin silver needle withdrawing from the port on his _true_ body's skull. The thing never ceased to give him the creeps until the moment his eyes reopened to the reality of the Matrix. Oddly enough, it was only there that he felt safe.

The rumbling beneath his feet as they hit the metal deck was _not _routine. The _Nebuchenezzar_ was moving, and it was in a big hurry.

"Link", he spoke with urgency. "What's going on? I thought we were at a safe distance."

Another voice came back to him, older and deeper but not by much: "We _were_. Thought you'd know by now- Sentinel city is not where we want to hang around."

Now his eyes were clear, and saw their brown-skinned operator sprinting for the bridge of the ship. Link- the young man with the goatee who had always met Neo's feats in the Matrix with a mix of awe and disbelief. It had only been two weeks since they picked up from Zion in order to replace their former, posthumous, Operator. Neo didn't get along with him as well as he had with Tank, which he felt was probably due to the whole 'messiah' aura all the folks from Zion seemed to shroud him in.

But what Link was saying now didn't make any sense. Ignoring the dizziness, Neo followed him up a ladder, finding him along with Morpheus at the helm controls.

The _Nebuchenezzar _was short on windows, but they didn't them to tell what was on their tail- the same machine that had chased them out of the machine city the last dozen times. The first _real_ machine that Neo ever had laid his eyes upon: a 'squiddy' Sentinel.

Not wanting to dash their pilot's concentration, he suppressed a whistle. _Eight_ Sentinels, and they were getting close. Whatever else happened, they were certainly moving up in the machines' estimation of them. Or maybe…

"Link", he prodded with a whisper. "There's no way that many would just happen upon us where we were. What do you mean, we're in Sentinel city?"

Still watching the monitors while Morpheus piloted them back into the sewers, Link gave a sigh. "We _were_ in Sentinel city like two minutes ago. Had to, can't just let the little girl drown."

"The little girl!", the words erupted from him, anger concealing his initial shock. "But… we ran out of time! She never had time to make the choice!"

Neither said anything, and Neo felt his eyes burning. "Link, tell me. Tell me we didn't just unplug that girl without her permission."

Link looked startled, now the target of a hostility he'd never seen Neo show before. "Well, um… sorry man. Trin's in the hold taking care of her now."

"Did she take the pill? _Did she make the choice?_"

Link cast his gaze back to the screens for a second, tracking the ship's descent into the bowels of what was once a huge factory. Despite being far more muscular than Neo, he couldn't meet his accusing eyes. "She must have. Couldn't have tracked her position otherwise, right?"

Neo still wasn't satisfied, but waited for the ship to settle into a pile of debris near a large abandoned generator. Even if the Sentinels tracked them in here, the EMP was already beneath Morpheus' fingertips.

He couldn't wait to speak to Morpheus about this. The burning sensation persisted, and he found himself stalking off the bridge instead of daring to interrupt him.

It was then, halfway down the ladder that he heard the cries from below. Allison's cries. Cries that longed for the warmth of home and family, and kept coming up to him in spite of Trinity's best efforts to calm her down.

He stared back up the rungs, back out into the darkness the bridge was now blanketed in with it's power off.

_What have we done?_

-

They met first back in the white space. After the Sentinel scare had passed them by, Neo had jacked back into the _Nebuchenezzar_'s 'loading program' and told Link not to bother with him for a while. While the rest of the ship's greatly reduced crew consumed sloppy liquid vitamins and minerals to keep up their strength, Neo resided in the endless white space where he had first learned of the new reality.

Just like the true Matrix, the white space's few rules could be bent or broken. As Morpheus entered, he saw that Neo had done just that- he had caused the 'floor' of the space to bulge upwards and form a hill. After that, he had swapped one color for another in everywhere but that hill, turning a white space into a black one that he stared out at from his hill of white.

"Allison is stable, thankfully", Morpheus called to his exposed back from the bottom of the hill. "And her muscles have not completely atrophied. She should be healthy enough in a few days."

The only response he got back was the white hill's shift to darkness. Black on black. Morpheus could no longer make out the hill, but still climbed it easily.

Before he reached the top, Neo blinked out of his trance. He had finally found the anger and the will to raise his voice against the man who had become the closest thing he now had to a father.

"She didn't choose the red pill, did she?"

Responding to his very thoughts, the floor beneath them flashed into that very same austere red on both the floor and ceiling. Fully grasping the problem, Morpheus completed the last steps and sat down beside The One on the hill.

"What was done… cannot be undone.", the older man said. "I never said it would be easy, Neo. Whatever decision she _might_ have made is pure conjecture. You know, better than anyone, what she would have chosen had she known the full truth."

Neo hated himself for saying this, but it was the first thing that sprang to mind: "What about _Cypher_, Morpheus?"

A long pause. "Cypher… was disillusioned, so to speak. He behaved exactly as the machines expect us to behave, acting on instinct, purely out of his own interests with no regard to the larger picture. At least, that is what I believe."

Finally, he couldn't hold it in anymore. Given that his life up until this past month had all been one big deception, honesty was undoubtedly the best policy when speaking to someone he still considered a friend and mentor. Distancing himself from Morpheus, Neo stood.

"Let me tell you what I believe. I believe we have just destroyed the life of a girl against her wishes, and the wishes of her parents… how do you cope with this, Morpheus? How do we go on freeing minds, knowing how many people we're hurting… and killing?"

Surprising him, Morpheus vaulted up from his seated position, moving and speaking with no small measure of his own anger. "By reminding myself that they act out of ignorance to the truth. The most painful part of a butterfly's existence is the final separation from it's cocoon. Yes, Cypher chose what he thought to be the least painful path. If we _all_ chose that path, Neo… where would we be?"

That made him think back. Generally around less than half of the potentials Neo had encountered had indeed chosen the blue pill. Obliging them, it was normally Neo and Trinity who had returned them to their homes safe and sound, blissfully unaware of the true reality.

Relaxing a notch, Morpheus paced around to the other side of the hill, still looking his protégé right in the face. "The fact that the real world is painful and disturbing does not make it any _less_ real. Just the knowledge that the reality you live in is predestined, is false, is… _programmed _is enough for any man to want to depart from it."

Partially spent, Neo lowered his gaze to the floor first, turning it white again. "And that's the thing, isn't it? Once you know that you can't trust one reality, the one you grew up in, you can't trust anything. How do I know that the ship, Link, and you, and… how do I know they're real?"

This time, Morpheus offered him a knowing smile. "By understanding their experiences and their feelings."

He couldn't help but reflect the smile, albeit distorted by a weary sadness. "I don't think I want to offer the choice anymore. If you don't mind…"

"What about Alice?"

Once again, he was surprised at Morpheus, at his being the one to raise the subject. "It's partially my fault she was unplugged. I'll do the best I can to make up for that until we get back to Zion, help her take the first steps."

As the white space finally returned to it's nominal state, Morpheus donned his mirrored shades once again, smiling. "Of course. Even the butterfly has gusts of wind to help it achieve destiny."

-

They called it the Metacortex.

It would hardly be a surprise to the people of Zion that the feared and despised programs called Agents devote nearly all of their active time online to seeking out the sources of pirate signals broadcasted into the Matrix, along with the unwanted humans they brought. All the same, especially given the recent arrival of anomaly hailed by the Zionites as 'The One', these incursions were sometimes few and far between.

Programs 31B and 57J- Agents Brown and Jones- did not share their late counterpart's irrational hatred of humanity, but neither did they prefer the presence of tens of thousands of hairy, smelly coppertops over the lack of them when they had a choice. Hence the Metacortex- a construct of close proximity to the Source that appeared like any other multipaned glass skyscraper on the outside, but held inside of it a programmed space, free of any trace of humanity. It was here that they had often returned to exchange thoughts, ideas, and- ever more recently for the past month- simply blow off steam.

As Neo had demonstrated only a few hours previous, the two Agent programs in question were different enough in personality and temperament that their thoughts, while harmonius, could differ. It was something that had developed over time as they spent more of it in the Matrix- individual personalities and ego; the very thing that had led their late counterpart into his demise.

"We are defeated", Jones opened bluntly, emotionlessly. "The anomaly has come again. No record exists of his defeat in the archives. Not in any incarnation of the Matrix."

"We must persist", Brown differed. "The anomaly cannot always protect the humans. We must find a way to divide them from another."

The unspoken question was 'how?'. Instead, Jones moved on to another factor. "But the anomaly has become their primary speaker."

"Morpheus is no longer vulnerable."

"Agreed. But the Reloading will commence within several months, and Morpheus will no longer be needed."

"Our purpose should not be stagnate. We would be deleted first."

"We must try to fulfill the primary purpose for the sake of our own existence."

Brown stopped, chilling at his own hesitation, covering old data tracks, old imagery of the program that had called itself Agent Smith, _and_ the taste of fear his fate engendered. _We will not end up like Program 66S, not if we can help it. We must act to preserve ourselves. Which means fulfilling the purpose by any means. _

"There has been no sign of Program 66S in the mainframe and no record of such an event happening in a past version."

"We should submit a request to the Source for program upgrades to deal with the threat."

"It is done. It will require time."

Which left them back where they had started- the puzzle of defeating the anomaly. Even before _his_ arrival and the subsequent demise of program 66S, Agent Brown had always been the most unconventional of the trio assigned to this thankless task of policing the Matrix. His ideas and numeric formulae in regards to their objectives had ever been the most radical. Now, tense with the frustration that the square-jawed Agent Jones shared, it was _he_ who was expected to find a new plan.

Brown thought about it with every bit of his processing power for several more precious seconds, and then his head and shades tilted up. "The humans were able to contact the girl Allison Richolds through unconventional means. She did not resist. Why?"

Instantly, both were silently poring over the data stored in Allison Richolds' medical records. One sprain, regular checkups… _six_ instances of hallucinations.

Brown quickly triangulated. "She has suspected the truth. The minds that they have freed possess similar medical history", he deduced from the records, making the connection clear to his partner. "Supernatural abilities, potential anomalies. By scanning for those with similar symptoms, we may be able to predict their next target."

He was not surprised to see that Jones had also been working on his own solution to the problem, taking a different approach. "Allison Richolds likely did not know of Morpheus and the others, of what they do", he stated flatly. "Perhaps it is time that we changed that, spread awareness."

Only a few seconds of deliberation later, Brown came to the conclusion that both of their plans could prove valid. They would attempt both. If one failed to produce results, they would have the other to fall back on.

If both failed, deletion would likely be an inevitable consequence. Once again, sentient program 31B felt the clutch of fear in his core. It was a very human sensation.

-


	2. Two

**Two **

**-**

Neo shouldn't have been shocked at his first sight of Alice, but he was.

Sitting on the steel bedding she had slept in, the girl was still almost completely bald. Here and there, you could see a trace of faint brown stems returning, mostly towards the back, but for the most part the invasive plugs that covered her were completely exposed. Trinity _had_ fetched a simple cloth dress immediately after they had recovered her from the machine city, but it still felt wrong to look at her.

Swallowing his doubt, Neo stepped in and waited for recognition to bloom on a face that was still stained with tears. "Mr. Neo…?"

"That's me. Listen. I can tell you're afraid, and I can't blame you. I just want you to know that I'll do whatever I can to make this easier for you."

Gradually, she gripped his outstretched arm in an amazingly strong grip for a little girl. "Please", she begged. "Please, Mr. Neo, let me go back home. I don't like it here! I want to go home!"

"That", he admitted sadly, "is the one thing I can't do."

"Then", she sniffed, "please just tell me why not! Trinity won't."

For a long stretch, he wondered if he would have to deny her this too. _How do you explain to a ten year old kid about the Matrix, or thinking machines or computer-neural interfaces, or the _**_Fields..." _**There's a reason that Trinity won't. Does she treat you all right?"

This time she nodded slowly, what had been close to panic winding down. "Yes... I guess. She's nice to me."

If money was of any value anymore, Neo would have put some down that Trinity had seen herself in Allison. He remembered hearing her speak of it on one of their first missions to free someone's mind, that she herself had beenthirteen when Morpheus had come for her. Looking at her now, one would never suspect what she had once been.

"Trinity's a very special person to me. To both of us, now. Look, once we get to Zion- that'll be a day from now- I promise things will get better."

"Zion?"

He didn't blink- this was almost live reliving when he had been unplugged, going over the basics one more time. "Zion's a city. Not… really a city like you think of, but it has a lot of people. I'll take you to meet Zee- she's Link's girlfriend, she has kids of her own. I know she'd like to meet you."

She considered that for a moment, feeling the rails on the bed around her. "Okay. One more thing- I'm hungry. When do we eat?"

He gave back a dry chuckle. "You might be sorry you asked."

-

"Turn that thing off, there's no point in reading it!"

Hearing Trinity's sharp tone- the one she always used when she was getting irked- Link just sent back a grin into the pit of greasy tools she was buried to her waist in. "Hey, it never hurts to brush up on the basics. Next time we're in the shop, I might even find hardware that could decodethis stuff."

"Better hope that's a ways off yet", her voice echoed up from the bottom level. "You know the commander."

Link's grin grew a bit sour- he'd known more about the commander's grudge with Morpheus than most even before he came aboard the _Nebuchenezzar_. "That goes for every ship, not just Morpheus, Trin. You'd swear to God the metal for each repair job gets plucked fromLock's skin."

She didn't laugh, and Link returned his attention to the basic streams of code slowly descending before his eyes. It was a text/audio newsfeed, and a very basic one. It was just shortly after coming aboard that he'd discovered how to hack it. Even if the news going out to the billions of humans still plugged into the Matrix wasn't exactly helpful to them, it would never hurt to check it.

_Besides_, he mused, _it makes for great entertainment when you know it's all BS._

The feed, amusingly named 'The Sentinel', was currently displaying information regarding the construction of a new freeway joining a major industrial and commercial area. Link was inwardly surprised- the programming of such a thing would require multiple stages of construction even when sped up over several months of people's time. It would take _him _all day to make even one of the stages look believable.

_But they have to sometime_, he reasoned. Eventually, people would notice that the city they lived in never changed- no new construction, no new businesses. They would start asking questions and become a general thorn in the Agent's side. _I guess you could say the Matrix turned out to be a lot more work than those mechanical bastards bargained for. They have to keep updating it with new programs, new locations… man, what a pain._

Smirking at the idea, he flipped the channel over to a different component of The Sentinel, one that he had paid closer attention to. Normally, it read like an obituary, and, out of fool's hope or superstition, he checked it every day for anyone they knew.

Right now, though, the feed was announcing the death of a relatively young woman by the name of Libby Peterson. Death by heart attack? An odd way to go, considering. Still, it was a bit depressing to learn that this woman had lived close to fifty years in the Matrix without a clue.

This wasn't what alarmed him. It was what that segment led into that caused Link to stand and nearly bang his head on the ceiling.

"Um… Morpheus?"

"Link?" That wasn't Morpheus, it was Trinity. She had climbed partway out of the gantry and poked her head out to see him. "What's wrong?"

Unable to completely describe it, he simply pointed at the screen. "Take a look. We're getting popular."

Not liking the sound of that one bit, she stood up to her full height and surveyed the code. She might not have been an officially-trained operator like Link, but experience was very helpful.

" 'Radical terrorist group Zion' ", Link muttered, staring at the code. " 'Led by Morpheus, whom authorities believe to be the most dangerous man alive. Hmmph.' "

Trinity's arms dropped to her eyes. There, right in front of their eyes, was the codified image of Mouse's final moments. Riot cops swarmed into a hideout, finding Mouse with two Tommy guns, Mouse gunning down several of them before they overwhelmed him…

" 'Recent kidnapping' ", Link was still reading, " '-of Allison Richolds. Connected to abduction of-' ", his face paled as he looked up at Trinity. "You."

Trinity stood, looking hard at the text hidden in the code like it was an Agent made manifest. "_Me_. That's how it looks to the public, doesn't it? That Morpheus 'kidnapped' us. Same goes for all the elder citizens of Zion. This is just pointless propaganda making Morpheus into public enemy number one… as if he wasn't there already." With a quick snarl, she moved to flip the monitor off.

Her own eyes were too quick for her, though. They stopped on the name Libby Peterson, along with confirmation of her death, and she stopped as if paralyzed at the same moment that Neo climbed down from the cabin level, immediately figuring that something had gone wrong.

" 'Libby Peterson' ", he read slowly, looking closer at Trinity. "Trin, is that…?"

Catching her breath, Trinity brushed the black oil from her cheek. "Yeah. That's my mother."

-

"As evidenced by previous encounters with authorities, the Zion group has demonstrated a common pattern of abducting, then brainwashing youths to serve as it's members. While their motives largely remain unknown, a contact recently received was recently intercepted by police…"

General Peterson looked at the television screen, even his dull stare enough to intimidate those that would usually frequent this pub. He couldn't stop staring at the screen, not after what he had heard, and what he had known.

Peterson fitted the common stereotype well- a solidly built man wearing three gold eagles on each shoulder, and his white uniform clean, spotless save for the array of medals pinned to it. Like his wife and daughter, he had completely black hair, though it was arranged into a crisp military brush cut. Many of his acquaintances in the military shared and abided his conspicuously 'confederate' accent, and his sole departure from the image was that he was completely clean-shaven, free of facial hair.

All that muscle he had built up over forty-eight years, however, was atrophying right here on the counter. He could no longer remember when exactly he had sat down for a few drinks, but it had to be longer than two hours with a single glass refilled an uncountable number of times. It had always taken him longer than his subordinates for it to take effect- and all the alcohol in the world couldn't purge his grief.

The voice of what was supposedly the sole verbal contact with a member of Zion woke him from his stupor. _Zion. Morpheus. _His fists clenched. Morpheus' Zion was only a myth when it had taken his daughter away from him. Now here it was, it's _modus operandi_ blared out to him along with the rest of the world, in what sounded rather likea young man's voice instead of Morpheus':

"I know that you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change… I don't know the future. I don't know how this is going to end; I came to tell you how this is going to begin. Now, I'm going to hang up this phone, and I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you… a world without rules and controls, without borders of boundaries. A world… where anything is possible."

What followed that was an analysis between two experts over what exactly that statement meant, including just whom it was addressed to. Peterson tuned it out- he'd heard and understood enough about Zion.

What the _hell_ were the damned spooks over there at the CIA doing? It had been their job to hound out Morpheus and the poor children he'd taken away, and so far he hadn't found a scrap of evidence that they had made any progress at all. And now this… Libby was gone, not from a heart attack, but from heartsickness. She missed their daughter even more than he did.

He still remembered that day with perfect acuity. Just like today, the kidnapping of an innocent girl had been on The Sentinel, complete with a personal statement by Libby that he had pushed for. "Morpheus. Whoever you are, and wherever you are", she had spoken into the camera in tears, "I open my heart to you. Please, if you believe in anything at all, please give me back my daughter. I'll give you _anything_, or do _anything_ in return, but please…"

That escapade resulted in a tapped phone line in their household. It probably still was; he hadn't had enough time at home to check. His wife had died from heartsickness, watched by the system, unable to reach the two people she loved most in the world.

And as for their daughter… His stomach twisted. The records indicated that Morpheus and his posse of black-clad zealots went after little children, always eight to fifteen years old, took them someplace the authorities could never find, and completely changed them to suit their needs. Never once had there been record of an informant or dissenter in the group. Whatever crazy mumbo-jumbo he used to keep Zion in order, it was certainly effective- Peterson's heart went out to the now-deceased young man who's code name was identified as 'Mouse'.

_That Mouse kidwas so brainwashed he was willing to forfeit his own life for Zion, for Morpheus. How can my little girl stand up to that…?_

Fresh rage was beginning to boil in him, fueled by the alcohol. _Brainwashed into serving a madman's cause… and now Libby… I will make you burn in Hell for this, Morpheus, if it's the last thing I do! You will regret destroying the Peterson family!_

With that, he shattered the solid glass on the counter with all his considerable might, and marched off to his quarters to begin early retirement… along with the hunt.

-

Trinity opened her eyes. Before her lay an endless sea of clouds you could no longer find on the earth. For one thing, they had never found evidence of the Swiss Alps. That legendary mountain was what this program had been modeled after, a simple rearrangement of the Jump program.

The only break in the pattern was the ground beneath her feet- a precipice extending up and outward like an outstretched finger over the endless blue and white.

Striding to the edge, she spread-eagled, tipping over bit by bit until she fell. Like a professional skydiver, she carefully angled herself over into the full spread as the fall built to the program's full velocity, blowing fresh wind all the way through her bare tank top outfit. The fact that the wind was programmed did not make it any less exhilarating.

She continued to fall for miles, seeing the spire of rock pass out of sight along with the light of an artificial sun. She had taken this time to angle into a position relative to a human missile, hastening her descent. Any moment now…

_There_. The hard ground at the bottom was becoming visible through the clouds right on schedule. Cutting short the skydiving tricks, she angled back into a new position against the wind, remembering the one kind of training you _couldn't_ download into your skull.

_Free your mind. _The rocks below were growing larger all the time, but already she felt the coding controlling the rule of velocity working on her body, and knew that with the proper exertion of will, she could control _it_. Gradually, she felt the searing wind leave her as her descent slowed down. By the time her feet touched the smooth rocks at the bottom, they did so delicately and precisely.

A pitched whistling noise, followed by clapping that seemed to come from everywhere at once. She didn't smile. "Thanks, Link."

"No problem, Trin. Between you and Neo, we're gonna need a bigger NK meter at the shop. You two are boss."

She didn't smile at that compliment either. Variant 'D' of the Jump Program was supposedly for training only, in theory. Yet she couldn't deny its effectiveness at working off stress. Up until now, it had worked fine in that regard.

A new voice came to her, dripping with concern. "Trinity. Are you sure you're okay for the mission today?"

Almost as if operating on a different wavelength than her thoughts, she answered without stopping for a single beat. "Yeah, I'm fine, why wouldn't I be?"

"Because…"

To her own private horror, her voice became stern towards the man he loved, again answering automatically. "Neo, you know me. You know I'm not an emotional tit. This is _nothing_ to me."

"You're right. Now that I think of it, I've never seen you cry. Not once."

"You won't", she promised to thin air. "We can't afford tears when we're up against the machines. _They _don't cry either, so there you go. Operator, you still there? Mind loading me up the sparring program?"

"No time, Trin", Link's voice echoed back to her from the nothingness. "We're up to broadcast depth in four minutes."

"Bullshit. Load variant F and I'll tear through it in three."

"Trinity…"

"Oh, fine. Take me out then, I'll get back to it later."

-

Everything had been going smoothly until they hit the road. The target was a man named Matthew Landers, who had previously shown an uncanny winning streak at casinos all throughout the city. Either the man was a cheat, or he had seen that there was more to the games he played than simple luck.

"Shit!", Neo remarked just after Matt got into the car. "They're coming. They're onto us."

No need to question that prediction. She knew Neo could right through the code when he was inside of it. If he said they were fucked, then they were fucked. "I'll take him, you keep them busy. Operator, is there another way into the building?"

Link's voice came back to them over the headpieces, still sounding surprised. "Looks clear to- oh, shit. There they are. Try the sewer exit, up the main drain and two rights."

Without hesitating, Trinity stepped out of the car along with Matt, letting Neo take the wheel to put some distance between them. "What?", Matt shouted once he had driven away. "I might be curious, but I'm not getting in a damned sewer!"

She _really_ didn't feel like arguing with him. "You do, or you die."

-

Leaving the car behind, Neo stepped out from beneath the bridge, into the sunlight. Beyond that, a small army of cop cars and military vehicles awaited him.

He counted fifty-three rifles and handguns aimed at him from cover. He wasn't entirely sure if the nearby tank was manned. Didn't matter.

Friendly and straightforwardas ever, Agent Brown stepped forwards, adding his gun to the arsenal. "You were anticipated. Surrender."

Just for fun, he raised his hands to reveal that he held no weapons; didn't need them. He could see absolute disbelief on several of the officer's faces.

"Where is Matthew Landers?" Brown again, straight to the point.

"Let's see", he pondered with his own deadpan. "Last time I saw him, he was with a good friend of mine, escaping in the exact _opposite_ direction."

Now it was his turn to shocked as Brown half-smiled. "Then we'll be hearing about them from my colleague momentarily, no doubt. Fire."

_Jones? Jones is waiting for them? _There was no time for further thought- fifty-four streams of bullets _and _the tank shell flew at him… and stopped in midair. There was no way they could connect, even with rapid fire… but neither could he safely leave the trap just yet. Agent Brown had made sure of that.

-

In the end, Matthew Landers had chosen to _do_. Breathing hard, he could barely keep up with Trinity, but refused the indignity of having her _carry_ him through the dull brown waste of the sewers.

She looked back, beckoning him over to the next stretch of circular pipe. He was fifteen, but Landers wasn't a bad looking guy. Slicked back hair that he had dyed red along with his eyebrows. Really, only the ring piercing on his chin marred his face. She found it amusing to recall that in the real world, Landers had more metal piercings in him than the most hardcore club bouncer. They _all_ did, except for Link.

"This way", she said to him from the intersection. "We should come up right outside the main building. If we're lucky, no one will see us."

Still on the verge of heaving, Landers slowed down at the manhole, and peered up at with renewed confidence in his boyish grin. "Being lucky is my specialty, lady. I'll go first."

Shaking her head at the lame pun, she followed him up the ladder, thankfully not seeing a trace of the massive military blockade she knew Neo was running elsewhere in the city. _Stay safe, Neo. Come back to me._

"This the one?"

Trinity looked back. Yes, Landers had picked the door that into where Morpheus and Tank were waiting for them. Hopefully after that, Neo could find an exit and get back in time for-

Matt was knocking on the barricaded door for a second time when it exploded in his face- two hands had burst directly through it, and out to grab Matt by the waist… and throw him across the four-lane road to the other side of the street!

Before Trinity could make a move, she saw the rest of the door cave in. Two muffled gunshots sounded out from the cloud of dust. Two bloody black holes appeared in Matt's forehead.

Matthew Landers simply collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He hadn't even seen the face of the Agent before he had died.

Rapidly pushing away the weight of failure, she ran down the closest alley fast as her legs could take her, across the next street and into a sandlot.

"Trinity?" the voice crackled into her headpiece, panicked. "Trinity, we just barely got out, did you see-"

"-Yeah Link. Matt's dead, can you find me an exit?"

"Corner of West and 3rd… One block away."

She offered up an impressive string of curses directed at both the Phone Company and the city planners. A city block was way too much when an Agent with a gun was closing on you. Breathing a silent prayer, she poured on the speed and ran for life.

-

To the extent he could be, program 57J was pleased. 31B's new plan was working. The anomaly had not interfered in the chase so far, kept occupied by the legion of cops and soldiers he faced. The human's target was dead, and he now had the chance to catch another one of Morpheus' little miscreants.

…_And_ to repay an old debt. Machines _never_ forgot- Jones could never forget the absolute humiliation that had flooded the core of his being when the very same woman he was now closing on- the human who had chosen the code name 'Trinity'- had shot him in the head at point blank range, absolving his termination of the anomaly as well. He should have, _could_ haveended him right there…

He had been careless, overconfident towards those two wretched humans, whom at that point had posed little threat to him until he had heard 'Trinity' whisper the words "dodge this!" in his ear, incomprehensible until it was too late.

_Never again._ The young woman had already crossed several lanes of traffic to reach the closest exit line. But the catch was that he _knew_ she would be going for that particular phone line to escape- _he_ had designed it that way. He had already gotten ahead, taking detours across rooftops to access the very building her Operator no doubt viewed as a safe haven. _Well…_

Jones was waiting at the door, but she reacted incredibly fast, knocking the gun from his hand and down a storm drain. Without missing a beat, he uppercutted her out of the little restaurant and into the vacant street on her back. Before she regained her balance, Jones picked her up by her right arm, hung by the sleeve of her trench coat, and brutally threw her into a brick wall, collapsing it along with the rest of the apartment across the way.

Shaking off her daze, Trinity managed to stand up again just in time to see Jones closing on her again. Desperate and pumped with adrenalin, she drew the handgun from her belt and emptied its clip into the furious Agent's blurred, flickering image as he crossed the distance between them. Too quick, he punched, snapped her elbow joint hard enough to knock the weapon from her hand and break the joint as well.

Completely certain now that she was defenseless, that the anomaly could not help, he loomed over Trinity's smaller figure and did his best to replicate his late colleagues' glacially slow tone. "Ah, Ms. Peterson. You know I've always found the human female to be an interesting mathematical paradox."

He punctuated that statement by slugging her across the face and picking her up again from the rubble by a single weak, broken arm, helpless.

"As we see here, you are noticeably more physically and emotionally _fragile_ than your male counterparts, yet you are the only source of the limitlessly valued human reproduction… Your very _biology_ demands protection by stronger creatures."

Trinity said nothing, too badly beaten up to even muster the energy to snarl at Jones. Content, his gaze absently searched the ruined building and the surrounding area for the final means to his end, and finding it in the very weapon she had just emptied at him.

Still holding Trinity by her right arm, Jones pointed the reloaded gun squarely at area where her black tank top covered her breasts, and smiled, spoke to her in the same mocking tone as before. "As intriguing a specimen as you are, it is time I allowed you to join your verminous progenitor. Good-bye, Ms. Peterson..."

Given the fact that this young woman had not yet show any sign of fight left in her, Jones was a bit shocked when her entire face- her entire body- relit with the fierce fire of life at the same time she struck him in the chest with her left leg. He was even more shocked when that leg did not merely impact where it struck, but began to _phase_- that was the only way he could think to describe it- with his right arm and the area around it. It all immediately went numb.

"My _name_", she gritted out, completely recovered, "…is _Trinity_."

-


	3. Three

**Three **

-

Link examined the rows of buggy code flashing before him with growing concern. Being trained as a professional operator back home at Zion, he could generally understand the code that made up the rules and objects of the Matrix no matter how fast they flashed into his optic nerve. The only exception to his ability he'd ever seen so far was Neo.

Now, with Morpheus sitting beside him and tracking the code fluctuations with near-equal speed, he feared that _this_ was another one of those weird exceptions. Even the untrained eye could tell that the code around Trinitywas going wacko just by watching the way the streams were crisscrossing each other, coming out in absurd patterns that made no sense at all to Link's experienced eyes.

He looked over at the NK meter and felt his eyes and head burning from staring too long. "Jesus. Boss, this is loco! It's not just Trinity and that Agent- _everything_ around them is being affected as well. Try and contact her again, tell her to stop whatever it is she's doing- I can't even see the exit lineanymore!"

Slowly, as if he was equally amazed, Morpheus brought the headpiece to his mouth, speaking evenly. "Trinity. Whatever you're doing, it's making things worse. You have to stop. Try to calm down."

A deafeningshriek of static was his sole answer.

-

Neo did not need an Operator to tell him where the newest crisis had emerged- he could see it with the code or without from his vantage point, flying above the cityscape.

The code itself was being twisted and mutilated. He saw strands of it being blasted apart indiscriminately, then rearranged into new formations that made no sense at all even to a programmer's mind. The green coding that normally moved downwards in straight, orderly lines was running in endless circles and triangles, mashed together like the slop they ate on the ship. All of it was contained in a 30-yard radius at the moment… but it was spreading outward at a steady rate.

"Neo. You seeing this?"

"In more ways than one", he told Link, visibly shaken. "The buildings over there look like they're… melting. Is Trinity over there?"

"Can't lie, man. I think Trinity may be _causing_ it."

_No way. _Unconsciously, he picked up the pace, flying over to the collection of buildings worst affected by the mysterious code-mutating force.

"I can seeher code in there", he shouted to Link over an odd buzzing noise. "It's intact. I'm guessing it won't affect humans. Going in."

"Be careful, man."

The buildings he strode through were painful merely to look at. Many had melted down diagonally as he had seen, and others held exposed pockets of pure nothingness- places where the code had been tossed away, or replaced with a different script texture. In more than one spot he saw, Neo knew he only felt sick to his stomach because he was a programmer- everyone else would just assume a thermonuclear bomb had fizzled in this part of the city.

Rounding a lamppost that was bent over into a spiral, his heartcried outas he saw Trinitystopped in midair, still held upright by the Agent he had missed. Both of them seemed frozen in time, but when he looked closer, he that was true for only the Agent- Trinity was simply petrified.

Her chest was moving- very rapidly, in fact... but the whites of Trinity's eyes seemed focused on oblivion. As Neo watched, inwardly terrified for her, a nearby hydro pole curled up, producing yet more of that high-pitched cracking noise that prevailed around this neighborhood. It sounded slow, yet unmistakably destructive, like the buildings melting into sludge around them were cracking in half piece by piece.

"Trinity!" Neo yelled to her, trying to break the spell along with the chaos Link had saidshe was causing. "Stop! Let go of it!"

Getting no response back, he tried in vain to move Agent Jones from where he was standing, still partially fused with Trinity's leg. He gasped with effort, still awestruck at the chaos being wreaked on the orderly code of the Matrix. He was The One… and he couldn't even lift the shades from the frozen Agent's eyes. At least he wasn't moving… "TRINITY!"

Finally, he'd had enough. The very concrete beneath them was now melting down into something more akin to quicksand. Flying to stay above the mire, he looked at the young woman in code instead of image, focusing on the one part of her- the one part of _all _humans- that couldn't be expressed in Matrix code. It was always expressed as a cluster of green bolts like electricity, and was often used by Link as a crude measure of neurokinetics.

Neo's hands plunged into that space. Moving beyond simple physical manipulation, their own code now scoured the massive green flare in Trinity's head, slowing winding it down into something containable by the skull outside of it.

Finally the glow, along with all the chaos it had caused, eased up simultaneously. Neo bent down, allowing Trinity's limp form to sag over his shoulder, and took off for the nearest intact exit. Four minutes later, Agent Jones regained his senses… but _not _his form. Not all of it.

-

They all sat around the ship's broadcast deck, casual. For once, no one was playing the Operator or being plugged back into the Matrix- they were well past broadcast depth, and well en route to Zion.

Disbelieving, Trinity looked at the concerned faces of friends around her. Morpheus, Link, Allison, and Neo. After reviewing the chaotic coding she had created by accident, she didn't know what to think anymore.

Morpheus drew closer, always the first one to ensure her safety. "You are certain this is the first time this has occurred, Trinity?"

Feeling sheepish around so much concern in their eyes, she nodded. "Positive. The Matrix is the last place I would want to drop into a temporary coma."

"What did it feel like?"

She bit her lip. Aptly describing what she'd felt would not be simple. "It was like… my mind was just on overdrive. I just felt this energy- it was like the time when we rescued you, and I _felt_ every single bit of that chopper's code before it blew."

Across the circle, Neo blinked, remembering. "After that, we all thought for a while that _you_ were The One. Even if you aren't, you're like the others we've freed- you can alter the code with your mind to a degree."

"But this was different", she said, looking back at Allison. "This was so much more than anything I'd felt before. It was… beyond what I could control. It just went crazy."

Brushing sweat form his scalp, Link nodded. "You could say that. The coding for that entire area went haywire. Like Neo's tricks, but different, more, well, chaotic. Nearly fucked up our operating system before I disconnected."

"Chaos in coding", Morpheus frowned in concentration. "The walls were _melting_."

Suddenly, Link got it. He looked back to the code, then to Trinity and Neo. "Wait a second. Sir, you didn't catch the Sentinel broadcast today, did you?"

Morpheus caught onto who Link was addressing by 'sir', and shook his head unabashedly. "I have no interest in what lies the machines have to tell their victims."

With another apologetic look towards Trinity, Link continued. "Well, the rest of us did. Trinity's mom died. They said it was because of heart failure or something. Name's Libby Peterson."

"So!" Trinity interrupted, far too loudly to be natural. "That doesn't have anything to do with my power over the Matrix. Besides, she's-"

"It's _stress_.", Neo whispered finally. Feeling everyone's eyes on him, he spread his arms. "Look, Morpheus, you're the one who first told me that the start of being able to alter the rules of the Matrix is to free my mind. Trinity knows that by now… but I use my mind to do that every time I fight in the Matrix, and so to the rest of you. If the mind is in chaos…" his voice trailed off, and he shrugged at Trinity.

"I am _not_ stressed out", she contested loudly, the iron in that statement daring anyone to differ with her. "She was _nothing _to me. Nothing! I haven't even seen her damn face for twelve years, alright?"

"But she raised you for thirteen", Neo responded at last. "Human psychology 101: if you hide strong negative emotions inside yourself, they come out in other ways. This was one of them."

Despite her best efforts, even Morpheus seemed to buy that theory. "I understand. The chaos we saw on the outside reflects the state of the mind manipulating it. We should be grateful- it saved your life this time."

Her voice came back with its most dangerous edge, reflected in her alarmed eyes: "Are you… saying you think I'm _insane_?"

He rose, trying with every motion to get Trinity to calm down. "No. I simply think you have a great deal on your mind to take care of. We're almost at Zion, you can talk to our friends there, and heal. Until then, I suggest you avoid plugging in. That's all."

With that, he left, and Link followed him up to the ship's bridge, leaving only Neo and little Allison. She stared back at Neo, trying to find some way to see what changes this discovery had wrought in him. "Neo, please. I'm not."

He couldn't truthfully say yes. That was the big problem. He had walked personally through the melted buildings in the Matrix less than an hour ago, and knew beyond a doubt that the chaos could not possibly have been the work of a healthy mind. Instead, he shooed Allison from the room and embraced her right there on the deck.

"We'll find a way through this", he whispered to her with as much loving warmth as his bare skin. "No matter what happens, I'll be there with you. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

But Trinity rose up, out of his grasp after just a few seconds, and looked down at him with deeply frightened eyes just as they felt the ship dock with Zion. "It is. For me, Neo, it is."

-

In the privacy of the Metacortex, Agent Brown stared at the right arm of his surviving colleague- or rather, what was left of it- with an acute sense of morbidity. "This is unheard of."

Agent Jones followed his gaze, eyes always squinting, even behind his shades upon viewing it. His right arm was no longer a solid object, but rather a random arrangement of jittery gray textures floating around where the arm should have been. Rapidly shifting position and image, they swarmed around the raw ending of his side like maggot flies over dead flesh, still unable to pull themselves together into anything resembling a solid arm.

"The anomaly's destruction of 66S was also unheard of, until we saw it", Jones contended simply, trying not to show that he was perturbed by the chaotic phenomenon. "It was the girl who did it."

"The one called Trinity."

"Yes. Likely, the corrupt data will be removed and refreshed with the next system update. Until then, we must maintain a cordon around it."

"And the anomaly and his allies _still _live."

Jones grimaced with anger. "Yes, though the target was eliminated. We will continue your plan after my code has been refreshed."

Disrupting their perpetual state of agreement, Brown rose from his chair. "It is not enough. The anomaly must be silenced."

But Jones remained seated, emotionless next to his partner's sullen anger. "We are without means to that end. We must not engage him until a solution is found."

Brown wasn't done- he knew exactly what Jones' speech entailed. "Our previous meetings show that I have calculated the optimal solution 56.3 percent of the time. You expect _me_ to develop another solution to the anomaly."

Unable to lie, Jones said nothing and raised his disabled arm, letting Brown continue to simmer, now utterly boiling. "Inadvisable. I have already exhausted all resources and viable solutions for-"

A dull thump coming from below interrupted his rant. Surprised and further irked, both Agents peered down out of the office window to see their visitor knocking on the glass security door. He bore a jet black brush cut that appeared only as a moving circle of black to them, along with a mauve civilian trench coat.

His arm still on the fritz, Jones sighed dismissively. "A human. Security will be purged for this."

Yet to his shock, Brown was once again thinking on a different wavelength. That had never happened _twice_ in a row before. "We will speak to him. Perhaps he is another informant."

Jones politely snorted in his chair. His own initiative to spread awareness of Zion and Morpheus to the walking batteries outside had made Morpheus the enemy of every grown man or woman in the Matrix, but the chances that it would persuade another of the Zionites to defect was astronomical... in the 5-digit alphanumerical exponents, at least.

"We may as well. Until a new solution is found, and my program restored, we cannot initiate further action against the anomaly."

"Agreed."

-

The men had brought him to a completely square room, padded almost like the cell of an asylum except with clean linoleum tile covering the floor. One of the spooks shared a table with general Peterson, while the other shied away from actually entering the room or exposing his body all the way.

The one with him opened what the general guessed to be his personnel file and military service records. Not exactly hard to find- his house had a copy, along with several of the organizations he'd worked with over the years. He had little to nothing to hide.

"You requested our attention, General Peterson", the brown-haired man droned slowly across the blank table. "You have apparently withdrawn from the service with honors, seventeen _years_ before a guaranteed retirement. We cannot help but wonder… why?"

"A change of objective, so to speak", he replied eagerly, removing his coat. "I have done my time in service to this country. New priorities now."

"And those would be…?"

_By Christ, the CIA sure can pick 'em. I've heard Email alerts with more emotion. _"I know why it is that my wife died. I also know that you've been assigned to tracking down the man responsible for that. Put simply, I want to help."

It was difficult to pick any trace of feeling from behind the spook's mirrored shades, but to his own annoyance, general Peterson though he saw a hint of amusement.

"Your enthusiasm is… appreciated, Mr. Peterson. However, this is not the type of situation we can afford to bring civilians to assist with. Morpheus is the most dangerous man alive. He has killed hundreds of men by hand, _including_ one of ours."

The general placed both hands on the table, none too gently. "Then _you_ know why I'm here. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to put this sunofabitch on ice. Just give me a position. I may have stepped off center stage for this, but I'm still a very important man, sonny."

Again, that faint hint of arrogant amusement shone through, stronger this time. "Mr. Peterson. We understand that the death of your wife and abduction of your daughter may have caused you to become… emotional…. in regards to this situation. We cannot simply accept a recruit from another branch of the service, untrained-"

"That's why I left!", he fairly exploded. "So I could avenge-"

"-No, Mr. Peterson. I suggest you return to your home and leave this to the professionals." Jones followed that with three quick taps on the metal table- a common code to signal the end of any meeting.

Seeing the other spook move to escort him from the room, now revealing that he was wearing a cast on his right arm, general Peterson hatefully looked up at Jones' soulless eyes, now only partly concealed by his shades. "You haven't heard the last of this, son."

And Agent Brown, in spite of everything, knew that he had not.

-

Zion. Balconies and walkways all about the ship and the dock it had rested on, lights emitting from each. To their newest arrival, the city might look as though they were standing in the center of a mad carousel of lights. Neither the bottom nor top of it could be seen from where they were.

Neo walked Allison out onto the gantry step by step, careful not to let her fall. "_This_ is Zion. I know what you're thinking. I'm still not completely used to it either, but I know it's better than the ship's cots."

Alice stared at the tens of thousands of lights, letting them fill her reflective eyes. "It's pretty. My mom and dad won't be here, though, will they? They're… back _there_."

Feeling a pain hit his heart at the mention of 'there', he smiled. "Afraid not. We should pay my room a visit first- Link probably wants his own private time with Zee and the kids before we barge in."

Moving with her along the walks to the perimeter of lodgings, he blinked in confusion. He'd never exactly been talkative, in or out of the Matrix, but the words had poured from him like someone more sociable was borrowing his voice.

He saw Trinity come out of the ship alongside Morpheus, and remembered the other major reason they were here. After giving their report, Morpheus and Trinity would be paying a visit to the infirmary- the only one Zion had.

Ahead of him, there were a great many faces. Some he knew. Most he did not, though those ones almost always looked on him with a strange flare of confidence in their 'savior'. If not that, then they were looking friendly towards Alice, still holding on tightly to his hand, totally out of place here.

_Trinity_. He saw her again, ascending a ramp to a higher level. There had never been any question from the start they had a… thing for each other. Now, with Allison by his side, it was almost like a peek into the unexpected future. He'd never even considered having kids. He'd be a terrible father. _Software designer, hacker, The One... She never considered it either, at least not until the Matrix is vaporware._

That could well be a long time coming. Neo ran the numbers in his head, and nearly banged it on the door to his quarters. He had never really considered how many other Hovercraft were out there, broadcasting that signal that allowed them to free and locate young captive minds. He knew a few of them- the _Logos, _the _Circa_, the _Mjolnir_… say, 100 for argument's sake.

Allison finally separated from his grasp and looked around at the new space she'd been brought to. "Big", she remarked pleasantly. "Do you stay here alone, Mr. Neo?"

"No, usually Trinity comes by. And anyone here would be willing to share a bunk. I'm just going to rest here for a few minutes, okay?"

"Okay."

He flopped on the ratty bed, resuming his calculations. The _Nebuchadnezzar_ had just returned to Zion from a four-day voyage, bringing back exactly _one_ new free person with it. If every hovercraft out there managed to free one person per trip, one trip per week, times 100, times 52 weeks in a year…

He stared outside the window in shock, running the numbers through his head in despair. The human population of the Matrix was 6.5 _billion _at last count. To free even a thousandth of that number, Zion would be at this for 12500 _years_.

There had to be something he was missing, something the rest of these people knew would eventually happen. Oh wait, yes there was. They expected _him_ to single-handedly bring down a computer system of computing power no number could describe. It was an odd thing to realize that he had found it easier to figure the approximate number of calculations made by the Matrix computer mainframe per nanosecond. Then again, he _was _a coder first and foremost.

All 'The One' had to do was figure out how to crash it.

Suddenly the prospect of being a father didn't seem that overwhelming at all.

-

Morpheus had waited through all of the tests, all of the scans. While it was true Zion had had to build its infirmary up entirely from scratch, they had managed to salvage a great deal of technology more advanced than anything found in the Matrix. In particular, the medical ward catered to mental injuries rather than physical ones, simply because there was so much that could go wrong when a hovercraft's crew was hacking into the Matrix on a regular basis.

He wasn't alone, either. While he had claimed to be here to watch another member of his own crew, the man sitting across the room from him betrayed his concern with his eyes. While not as old as Morpheus, he was no longer in the same bracket as Neo or Trinity either. Like the woman he had separated himself from, and still cared for under everything else, Ghost was a man of few words and many actions, especially on missions. Morpheus had yet to see a better marksman in any other human.

The chief medic, a lean, sallow-faced man who would look more at home in a prison hospital, opened the rustyhatch and made certain to close and lock it.

"How is she, Patch?"

His darkly-cornered eyes not giving anything away, Patch closed his up coat and pulled up a seat at the other end of one of the medical tables, closer to Morpheus than the man who had called his name. "The best thing I can tell you is that I've seen it all before."

The older man's eyebrows arched, and he spoke for the first time in hours. "The commander wants us out of here in less than 30 hours. Will she be ready?"

Patch didn't flinch, even against someone famous- or in some cases, _infamous_- as Morpheus. "Let me break it to you step by step", his gravelly voice came on slowly. "Your Operator made the right call about her mother. I think that may have been the foundation of it."

"I'll have to give Link a pay raise-"

"-Don't joke", he warned sternly. "You have to understand that I'm under _direct__orders_ from Commander Lock to take a more lenient tack to diagnosing the crews of those hovercrafts actively on missions. The trauma of separation from the life they once knew, coupled with the stress from dangerous activities only theycan undertake does not promote stability. You and the others get shot at _every day_."

"That's not a problem for her", Ghost interrupted in absolute certainty. "I know her. She knows what needs to be done."

But Patch just sighed at himin derision. "You plug-heads are all alike. You think that because you're part machine, you're immortal and emotionless asthey are. Well I hate to break to you gentlemen, but your first-mate Trinity _is a human_. And, typical of humans, her mind can sometimes run in circles on her."

Ignoring Patch's blatant slur against 'plug-heads'- against all humans like himself who had been cloned in the machine city-, Morpheus regained his composure and extended a palm in a kind of truce. "Continue."

"She told me the details you wanted her to", Patch said gruffly. "I have no doubt she feels responsible for her mother's death and her father's grief, assuming he's still alive. She's angry with herself. But she doesn't like or want to show emotion because _certain people _expect her not to. That makes her angrier because she knows she is still feeling those emotions inside... Which makes her angry with herself all over again."

Starting to understand how Patch had gotten his job, Morpheus looked over at the door. "A cycle without beginning or end."

"If there's one thing that girl hates", Ghost seconded, reminiscing, "It's being a burden on the rest of us. Even if she's not."

"Exactly. Couple that to the demise of our dear traitor friend Cypher, and the fact that she is, well, shall we say… _dans amour_… with a certain someone I have sworn not to mention, and you have one very emotionally burnt-out out lady. With partial control over the Matrix coding. Seeing what that did just piled more grief on top. Now she's in denial."

"How can we help her?"

Contrary to Morpheus' expectations, Patch did not dismiss Ghost's request or fire off another remark about plug-heads. If anything, his gaze softened. "Your compassion is understandable. Keep her the hell out of the Matrix, for one. Even if she goes with you in the end, you _must _keep her out. Meditative exercises of any kind would be a great asset."

"I can help her with that", Morpheus replied.

"Yes. But more than anything, the easiest cure for this kind of injury is _time_. In time, she will learn to deal with the reality of it, just as you did, Morpheus. Just be careful."

With a motion to Ghost, he walked over and wheeled open the door so that his final words to Patch could be heard by Trinity. "I intend to."

-

M: In regards to the continuity gaffs outlined in my first review, I have nothing to say to the first one except ARRRRGHHH. Definetly should've double-checked the lore before posting. Still, I was certain I had it right- in Reloaded, Link and Zee really act more like lovers than abrother and sister. I suppose Zion is a bit more lenient on inbreeding than we would expect, since they really are the minority population.

As to the other point, I always figured anyone who knew Trinity as a friend would call her 'Trin',because it's such an easy shortening of a nameto make. Strangely, I've never heard Neo call her that in any of the movies...

Thanks for your interest.


	4. Four

Disclaimer: Something I nearly forgot about, so I will be making a larger one than usual here to cover all the chapters: All the characters and locations not mentionedhere belong solely to the Wachowskis. I have created the new characters General Peterson, Libby Peterson, Patch, and Scrap for the purpose of this fanfic, and will add more as I see fit. I don't own the Matrix. The end.

-

**Four **

-

Ex-general Peterson had returned, just as he said he would. The ease with which he had done it thoroughly tried Agent Brown's limited patience for humans. Once again, Peterson was at the door to what was supposed to be their private space. Brown could tell his remaining counterpart was becoming frustrated as well.

Just as though they were dealing with the anomaly that Brown and Jones still had no answer to, nothing had turned him back. After their initial meeting, they had instructed the secretary, and the security on the entry floor to turn him away if ever he returned. They never wanted to see his fleshy, revenge-pumped visage again.

Hadn't worked. They hadn't seen it firsthand, but Jones had already calculated a 97-percentprobability that Peterson had shown them a gun as his 'passcard'. Motioning to Jones to remain stable, Brown took a deep breath and answered the caller.

"Who is it?" As if he couldn't extrapolate…

"It's me again. I have some new information you boys might find interesting."

Brown looked to the dull tile ceiling in imagined agony. _Why_? Why was this human so persistent in annoying them with his needless information? "I must confess, I am surprised to hear from you after our last discussion, Mr. Peterson. Maybe you… _missed _the part where we told you to go home and get some rest."

"I will do you a favor and pretend I didn't hear that", Peterson replied over the microphone with an equal amount of will. "And a field agent doesn't instruct a general to do a damned thing, sonny."

"_Ex_-general", Brown corrected dryly. "Now, I'm a reasonable man. I will give you two minutes to leave us in peace and never return."

A short pause later, the microphone responded. "It's about the youngest of the abductees. Eyewitness accounts from a kind of mini-orphanage in an apartment owned by a Miss Foster. I believe I've found the location of the woman called 'The Orac-"

Jones shut the mike off in distaste and raised his new right arm code. "We should have him shot."

Brown rose from his seat at those words, cracking his neck calmly. "Why wait for other humans? He has ties with no one. I will do it."

Once he had faced away from Jones, a satisfied smirk crossed Brown's face. At last- a chance to work off some of the anxiety that had built within their cores towards their inevitable deletion if things continued as they were. He would be sure not to kill this one too quickly.

Ex-general Peterson had come expecting the door to the main office of the Metacortex to slide open. He had not expected Brown to come bursting through the drywall beside it and tackle him into the iron railing that ran along the office perimeter, bending it outwards.

Brown rapidly moved up and flung Peterson over the edge, disregarding the property damage- they could easily refresh the coding at a later date. The program was halfway through a Herculean leap downward onto the first floor lobby when he saw Peterson jut both of his legs out in time to keep from hitting the tile floor, and flipped right back into a standing position.

"No doubt you realize", Brown spoke smugly, "that your actions will sever all previous ties with this country's government and places you under wanted status."

A human would have found the expression on the other man's face, as well as his voice, to be savage and terrifying in its mix of despair and rage. "I-DON'T-FUCKING-CARE!", he screamed at Brown at the top of his lungs, beyond reason, beyond humanity. "I DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT MY RANK ANYMORE! REVENGE IS THE ONLY THING I HAVE LEFT!"

Unable to calculate a suitable response to his screaming, Brown simply charged, his left hook catching the human in the gut and knocking him back into a marble pillar, shattering it. Peterson had barely risen from that blow when Brown kicked him into the secretary's desk, with similar consequences. Stray computer paper flew everywhere now, a light drizzle of white.

But Peterson hadn't always been an 'armchair' leader. Indeed; he had been near the top of his class when it came to unarmed combat in the military. He turned his tumble into a roll across the floor away from Agent Brown. The blood that was already trickling down his face was _less_ than a nuisance.

Undaunted, Brown advanced at twice the pace. His opponent was, after all, merely moving a human-level speed and reaction time. Disguised it might have been, but the Matrix was still a computer program. Meaning that those who were part of the system could both move and think at computer-speed. Only the despised anomaly had been an exception to this rule- he moved beyond the speed or strength of computations.

Once again, Brown laid into Peterson with a devastating collection of strikes mainly directed at the chest, knocking Peterson's mauve coat right off to reveal a threadbare white shirt beneath, and dirtying that bit of clothing with as much blood as he could knock out of him. This time, Brown knocked him through a window, out into the vacant parking lot.

He could not help but feel a kind of amazement blossom in his core- the human was actually getting up! After a beating that should have killed him three different ways!

One more kick to the chest would do it, Brown deduced. One more kick would crack his weak ribs in on each other, and even if they not impale some vital organ, the blood loss alone should be enough to finish _any_ biological being.

"That… the best… you got?", Peterson croaked from the pavement, still showing some signs of fight left in him. "What a pansy."

"Enough", Brown replied curtly. "This has gone on too long."

"True."

It took a moment for that last word, so casually uttered, to make impact with Brown. By that time, Peterson had not only twisted and spun back to his feet- he had struck out with a long kick of his own while spinning. While Brown had reacted in time and moved his arms to block that, he was helpless against the follow-up blow from Peterson's right fist.

Shades cracked, Brown fell to the pavement along with his utterly depleted foe. As he forcibly viewed the cloudy sky above him, Brown saw one other thing- his colleague at the window. He'd seen it all.

Ascending to his feet without using his arms or legs, Brown quickly flipped open a cell phone in his front pocket. He used it to call the closest hospital and request immediate medical assistance, including a wheelchair and replacement blood.

Snapping the phone shut, he looked back down at Peterson's form with a different vibe. He no longer saw a worthless coppertop, but a key.

-

"Zee said she'd take care of you for now, at least until I get back from the next trip back out."

Fully rested, Neo walked back along one of Zion's circular perimeters, careful not to lose the young girl. The walkways were not nearly as crowded now, but the lights were always on. Even if the thunderous black shroud that now covered the world some day parted, no ray of light would ever shine down upon Zion- it was in too deep.

He hadn't expected Alice to respond- he was just trying to keep her mind focused on things besides the revelation that was coming her way, that she had already started to wonder and ask questions about. _Like the kids at the Oracle's place_, he mused. _She always seems to figure things out faster than I expected her to._

A while back, an old friend of Link's had offered him the most sensible- and yet the most alarming- theory for why greater numbers of Potentials were showing up. Obviously, since 'coppertops' did not partake of physical sex, the machines would clone them to keep up their numbers. It had been that way since long before anyone could remember.

But now things had started to escalate. This older guy Scrap, he had learned a few things about cloning from old history files, and one important thing was that repeated cycling of the same gene caused inevitable mutations, more and more often the more the same sequence was copied. Lest he forget, _everyone _he knew that had the plugs in their heads and arms was a clone, including himself. Only the people born here in Zion were a truly new source of genetic material.

Unconsciously, his hand reached back to push the hair around the back of his scalp away and feel the cold metal of the plug. Disgusting, but it would always be there. It could not be removed without killing him, and the same went for the rest, including Alice. It was the eternal mark of those who had, only years before, been unknowing slaves of the machines. Only a month ago, he'd been back there himself.

"You're going out there?", Alice managed to speak up. "Why?"

"So we can free more people like you. We'll bring them back here."

"But not my parents. They don't see what I see in the fairy world, right?"

Feeling the certainty in that tone, he looked back down at her newly grown hair. _Christ, she really _**_is_**_ sharp. _"Right. We're supposed to find people with special gifts, like yours and mine. But Morpheus has always said that I would be the one to free the human race, and that includes them. Someday."

She seemed satisfied with that, and actually ran the last few paces to Link's quarters, letting Neo knock on the old metal and summon a groggy-looking Asian woman to the door.

"Hello, Neo", she said not unkindly. "Link tells me we have a new guest. This is her?"

"Yeah. She won't be here for long, just until I get back. Then I'm going to take a break for a while and raise her back at my place."

She gave him back a skeptical grin. They had not met often, but from what Neo gathered from snatches of conversation with his Operator, Zee was among the minority that didn't believe he was their savior. Given what had happened to her brothers, he couldn't blame her. "Even 'The One' can't be working all the time, I guess. But what about the Nursery?"

Involuntarily, his gaze hardened. "I don't want her to spend much time there if I can help it. She's not a kid."

"Not an adult either", she countered, eyeing Allison's white-toned face. "but I suppose we can make room for a bit. Just knowing _you've_ got people to come back to as well is worth something."

A bit puzzled by this response, he searched the are behind her for Link, but only saw Zee's kids further back. "He's not here", Zee said angrily when she saw him staring. "Went to check in with the commander for a job from the shipyards. Sometimes…"

"You wish he could be back here more often", Neo continued her sentence. Even _he _could figure this one out. "You think he's going to die."

Zee stopped to bring Allison in and introduce her to the quarters, taking several minutes, but somehow he knew she would return to the door. "Every single damn night", she finally answered humorlessly.

At once, he felt too uncomfortable to talk about it further. Even if she didn't admit it, deep down she wanted to hold _someone_ responsible for Tank and Dozer's lives. Someone whom she could rage at. It made sense that he was the prime candidate. _The One couldn't save Tank_, he remembered solemnly, _because he was blasted outside of the Matrix._ _Can't blame Cypher- he's gone._

Feeling as though he was talking to a grown-up version of Allison now, heart filled with regret as to what he had to say, Neo looked up at her face one last time. "All I can promise you is that it won't ever happen that way again. And that it won't happen in the Matrix while I'm still breathing."

"-Thought you'd have figured it out by now", she answered him, half joking-half crying as she closed the red metal door. "The Matrix has no place for him. His place is here."

Slowly turning away from the door, Neo found himself face to face with someone else who obviously wasn't enraptured by the myth of his 'messiah-hood'.

Squat shoulders, standing ramrod straight at all times just like a drill instructor. Average-spread black hair over a thin skull devoid of plugs. For a moment, Neo almost imagined him as a brown-skinned version of his old boss, Mr. Rhineheart.

"Commander Lock", he coughed out to mask his surprise. "Is something the matter?"

Jason Lock looked down at Neo in much the same way Zee just had- as though he was sizing up a big disappointment. "Not at all. I was just hoping to get a closer look at the kid everyone is so infatuated with. You're 'The One', huh."

"It's what I'm told", Neo replied neutrally, refusing to be bullied by the larger man. "Did you see Link? He had something to ask you-"

"It was denied", Lock said flatly. "The _Nebuchadnezzar _was in for a complete hull reconstruction just a month ago. It was in the shipyards for a _week_, we can't afford the resources to do that again."

As much of an affront to his crew as that was, he had to admit that everything Lock had said was true. While he had been trying desperately to escape from Smith and the others that last time, he hadn't realized at the time that the ship was being cut apart by Sentinels- Sentinels that they couldn't EMP without frying his mind while he was in the Matrix.

Still, he felt he had to offer some kind of resistance for Link's sake- they might not get back to Zion for a while. "It's not that again, Link just wants to be able to decode information feeds like the _Logos_-"

"I said no."

That seemed to end that topic. Instead of leaning on the rail like Neo had seen so many Zionites do, Lock simply folded his arms and stared off into the sea of lights on the other side of the massive circle. "So you believe it, then? You believe Morpheus?"

"I have to", Neo reasoned, following his gaze at the hundreds of Zion quarters. "I'm sure I'm not the only one who's run the numbers in his head. How many craft do we have in total, commander?"

Lock seemed surprised by the request, but he obviously knew the answer off by heart. "Ninety-two hovercraft, and six carrier craft. Why?"

He leaned on the rail himself to hide a short smirk, closing his eyes. His estimation had been pretty accurate then, and not just of Lock's character. Neo had seen his type before. "Long odds."

"Yes", Lock agreed behind him sternly, practically radiating annoyance at his detatched attitude towards their situation. "Against odds like these, _some_ people will believe anything to make it all better. My job to make sure they hang on to _reality_- we've a tenuous enough grip on that as it is."

"But you have to understand if people start looking for other ways to end this."

He made no audible sound, but Neo could sense the commander's mood darkening. "The fastest way to make it _end_ would be to invite the machines here and be done with it. We're not here to _end_ this conflict. We're here to _survive_ it."

So that was it, then. Jason Lock wouldn't be changing his mind any time soon, and wouldn't be bothered one bit if the wars continued past his lifetime. "Well, my ship finishes charging in a few hours. I'd better get ready."

"No need to worry", the commander said. "Morpheus wouldn't dare leave without his golden boy. He's short two crewers as is."

Abandoning the railing, he cast a dirty look back at Lock before throwing the quickest of salutes. "That's why I have to go. Commander."

That same acid glare followed him all the way back to his quarters, but he did not dare return it.

-

Program 31B had been awaiting a response from his colleague the moment he returned to their space within the Metacortex. Yet, either through some sort of mimicry of what humans laughably referred to as 'professional discipline', or out of simple shock, Program 57J did not voice his opinion on the matter at hand until 31B was comfortably seated across from him.

"It is a waste of time and resources. A human could never hope to compete with us."

Agent Brown tilted his head in acknowledgement- this was exactly the response he'd expected from his more by-the-book colleague. "I have been tasked with creating a probable solution to the anomaly, and now I have done so. What I felt was no mistake."

Left arm on his fake cast, Agent Jones did not look at all convinced. Once again, their thoughts were in consecutive conflict. "But this is folly. What you felt is irrelevant, you still defeated him."

In response, Brown placed one hand to his jaw as if to remembered pain from his fight with general Peterson. "The potential anomalies have appeared in biological strains in the past. Those were purged, of course, but they continue to appear. He is the male progenitor of the girl. She was cloned from his cells."

Jones tiled his head leftwards, slowly considering the concept now that the one named Trinity who had humiliated him twice had been mentioned. He could no longer deny her potential, even if she was a human. "Extrapolation. Do we know of any humans of biological relation to Thomas Anderson?"

"None", Brown smiled, seeing Jones take the bait. "In any case, none of them would be motivated as this one is. The alteration occurred when his heart rate was 25 percent higher than normal, neurokinetics level 57 percent greater."

"We should ask him, then."

On cue, a nurse wheeled ex-general Peterson into the hallowed space where no human had ever set foot before. Of course, it still looked like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill office. The difference was one only Jones and Brown would notice- it was totally, blissfully free of all human excretions. Until now.

The human had adapted surprisingly quickly to his new situation. His arms were sitting limply on the hand rests of his wheelchair a needle injecting blood into the right one, while his legs were wrapped in thick black cloth, holding them down. However, the strength in his left arm was more than enough to wheel him around to where _he_ wanted to sit.

As a notification of the altered circumstances from their last meeting, Brown slowly removed his shades and placed them on the table. "I trust your recovery is being handled adequately, Mr. Peterson?"

He shot Brown a look of hatred, but couldn't help but was too experienced not to notice the change in his attitude. "What's your game, son? You beat me. I don't know how, but you did. You could have let me die, but you didn't. Why?"

"After seeing the way that you fight, Mr. Peterson, we have slightly reconsidered your usefulness to us."

"Wasn't enough", he replied, sounding unmistakably depressed, and looking at his long legs, now stretched useless in front of him.

Brown nodded, not out of empathy but simple acknowledgement that Peterson knew he could never have won. "No. But you have demonstrated a certain talent that may help us."

He paused, shooting Jones a look as warning not to interrupt, even as he was entering the most controversial part of the plan he had made. "Mr. Peterson… what I am about to tell you is beyond the scope of this room or this country. It is as classified and top secret as it is possible to be. Even a man in your position may not have heard the slightest inkling."

Still disciplined despite his injuries, the human nodded. "Not a problem. My lips are sealed."

"Yes", Brown acknowledged smoothly, ignoring Jones' strong aura of disapproval. "We have prior evidence against Morpheus and Zion that, combined with the contact broadcasted before, has made perfectly clear their intent."

Interested, Peterson leaned forward. "And that is?"

"The destruction of modern civilization as we know it. The returning of the world to the Dark Ages. As you may know, we have seen this motive in the past, but this is the first group we have seen that may be able to realistically accomplish it."

"Sweet Jesus… how?"

At an invisible signal, Jones removed a paper file from his suit and slid it towards Peterson's spot at the table, knocking the first few photos loose. Most every one of them was of one of Morpheus' people, each wearing mirrored shades in various karate-action poses as they battled what appeared to be ordinary cops.

"You may not be able to discern from those photos, Mr. Peterson, but we have reason to believe that the Zion group has access to certain paranormal abilities beyond those of normal humans."

He almost laughed until he remembered who and what he thought he was dealing with. "What, you mean some kinda voodoo? Come on."

Brown perfectly mimicked clearing his throat to grab Peterson's attention. "It is _real_, Mr. Peterson. We know this, because our own people have attempted to harness these powers. Now, we believe we have found them once again, in you."

This, he _did_ laugh at. "I am a lot of things, son, but I ain't no magician."

Not backing down, Brown leaned towards him on the table. "Tell me. When I was about to deliver that last kick… how did you feel?"

For a moment, Jones sat back and admired the way the pieces were linking together in the human's memory. _Perhaps there is some hope for him yet- he shows excellent analytical skills._

"I felt furious, of course", Peterson finally answered. "Then things got kind of strange. It was like I could see _into _you. Into… everything. And there was something under your skin that told me what you were planning on doing. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but-"

"Not at all, Mr. Peterson", Brown answered quickly, inwardly pleased. "In fact, you've proven my theory. Now, in the interest of brevity, I'm going to offer you the final choice: do you want to help us, or not?"

"You want help from an insane cripple?", Peterson asked incredulously. "If I thought I could make a difference, then yes. But I can't. Not now."

Brown nodded. Human depression. It was a common occurrence after an injury of this magnitude to someone as vaingloriouslyproud as this human. He could only hope the reverse was true.

"Mr. Peterson, there is an experimental procedure we have developed. It will likely repair your damaged body, and allow you to help us find and terminate Morpheus. You will be one of us."

The ex-general absorbed all this in silence, looking hard at the metal of his wheelchair, motioning for Brown to continue.

"That choice is up to you", Brown continued. "However, I should warn you that our superiors are absolutely adamant that whoever joins us, stays with us for the sake of security. Once you have undergone this… procedure, you can never _ever_ go back. It will require you to surrender a portion of your individual will."

As he finished, Brown then nudged his shades, sliding them effortlessly across the smooth table to Peterson. The language was clear to everyone in the room: to take the shades was _yes_. To refuse them was _no_.

The human stared hard at the black shades, seeing his reflection in them stare right back at him, the emotionless mirror daring him to show his tears of grief. "I deeply appreciate the warning, son. Not to mention the choice. But you heard me the first time. Morpheus took away from me the two people I love more than life itself. The only thing I have left now, is vengeance. I'm in, andI don't care what it costs me."

All in one motion, he pocketed the shades and slid up to Brown's spot on the table. Brown extended a hand, and Peterson shook it with equal strength.

-


	5. Five

**Five **

**-**

"Calm, Trinity. Try to relax."

The sparring program's oriental-looking dojo was exactly as Trinity remembered it- every wooden beam standing up perfectly straight, the floor without a hint of wear. It did not look at all like the kind of place someone would live in.

The clothing she wore, like Morpheus', was also keeping to a minimalist approach. Nonetheless, she felt the gentle caress of the dark green kimono tied tightly at her waist. Morpheus, on the other hand, was sporting the same near-black tunic he had worn the last time he had requested this program a month ago, for the purpose of training Neo in person.

Copying Morpheus' cross-legged position ten feet from him in the center of the 'room' with her arms firmly placed over top, she was keenly aware that, despite prior requests for absolute privacy in one of Zion's several 'port stations', someone, or more than one someone, was watching them on the screens.

Morpheus seemed to be aware of it too. "Scrap, Hook… _Link_", he murmured softly, eyes closed shut and deceivingly tranquil in comparison to his reproach, "I am _quite_ certain the last thing you want is to be the reason for this exercise to fail. Trinity is not a formidable fighter solely in the Matrix, and neither am I. Leave us in peace."

There was no way to tell if they had obeyed or not. But Morpheus, at least, seemed to relax a bit further now, deeper into a nearly trance-like state of transcendence, fully expecting her to follow.

This didn't used to be so damn difficult. She could still remember twelve years ago, back to the time when she had first been freed by Morpheus, and informed of the truth. Like Neo, she had panicked. She had become unstable, had gagged and retched out of pure shock. Thirteen years in the Matrix, and she still had the occasional nightmare of it, locked up inside herself like everything else.

But, after the first year out of it… her mind had been freed of its chains. She could catch glimpses of the various programs for what they truly were and, in those instances, surpass what Morpheus had termed 'residual self-image' and move purely as consciousness, something she saw Neo do all the time now.

When both parties involved understood that what they saw and felt and smelled in these programs was not real, when both of them possessed strong minds and the strange genetic potential that had recently hit its climax in The One, _anything_ was possible. No wonder she felt light-headed.

But trying to shut her mind down, trying deliberately _not_ to focus on any single memory or thought… paradoxically, it was harder than anything else Morpheus could have asked her to do.

"Close your eyes. They overload the mind with needless detail."

"Yes." Yes. This was almost exactly how it was ten years ago. Herself, Ghost, Morpheus, and his senior crewers Kasat and Abel aboard the _Nebuchadnezzar_. No one else, nothing but her initial training with 'sensei'Morpheus. Both the same age, both released from the Matrix on the same day, she and Ghost had nearly confirmed Morpheus' expectations of The One. She had been assured then that it was just a matter of time until one, or the other, pulled ahead in their physical and mental training, here in an earlier version of this very program.

Still young and nervous, she had vowed to be the one to pull ahead, more out of sheer competitiveness than any desire to help Zion. But what they were being groomed to try and face, neither had known until it was too late…

It was not until much later that she would learn that the first Agent they had ever encountered had taken on the name 'Smith'. Both of Morpheus' best fledgling pupils, Trinity and Ghost, had tried their best, and neither had succeeded even when they fought as one. A terrible scene, one burned into her memory- seeing Smith using both arms to knock young Ghost and seemingly younger Trinity onto hard, rain-soaked concrete as if all their training had meant nothing against him. It had.

Ghost had broken ribs, but that, and his later departure, was not the first loss. Suddenly, the muscular Abel was between them and Smith, screaming at them both at the top of his impressive lungs to run for the closest exit line.

He'd stood and fought. But physical muscle had absolutely nothing to do with strength in the Matrix. Ghost had gone out first, and by the time Trinity had pressed the phone to her left ear, she could see and hear just enough through the glass and rain, to know that Smith had just snapped Abel's big neck. It was the most sickening, awful cracking noise she could ever recall hearing in her entire life, and Smith just stood up in front of her like it was nothing, calmly straightened his tie as she disappeared...

Kasat, their tattooed Operator, was transferred a year later. A year after that, his new craft and crew had disappeared like so many others in those dark times. Ghost, disillusioned after their appalling defeat, had left the ship and his place in Trinity's heart. In time, they'd replaced Kasat with Dozer, Ghost with Switch… and Abel with Cypher.

But Morpheus had always been to her the steadiest footing no matter the situation. Now he was doing it again, calling to her mind the image of a father bursting in to comfort the crying daughter out of her nightmares. That really was what he had been like, to her and Ghost; a _father_. The one man who's belief never faltered.

Somewhere along the way, her mind had decided that it was unfair to Morpheus to keep needing his attention. So she had walled away all emotion and feeling as best she could, still trying to become the person he had expected and hoped for.

It had been easier than most of the 'homegrown' Zionites would believe. She had excellent role models. All she had to do was think of Ghost, of Morpheus and, when she had to, of that emotionless, pitiless killing machine she would later come to know as Smith. Every feeling was a weakness in the hull to be patched, each surge a potential breach. It was only recently, with Neo, that that sensation had awakened once again, and even now she was glad to see she had not forgotten it.

Finally, Morpheus opened his eyes and bored directly into hers. "I'm beginning to understand what Patch said."

That was _not_ what she had wanted to hear. "Don't go by him, Morpheus. If you say I'm fine, I'm fine."

But she could already see in his eyes that her quickness to deny a second opinion bothered him. "I did not say-" training off, he raised his bald head and squinted at the ceiling in concern. "Trinity."

Following his lead, she looked up, and shock only made what had started to develop on the ceiling escalate even faster. It was like a giant puddle, the normally orderly ceiling of the program melting downwards, exactly as the buildings had during her last visit to the Matrix. Before either of them could react further, several pieces parted from the ceiling and fell to stain the floor as a liquid.

Sensing growing panic in Morpehus' manner, she was the second one to notice that the walls- the thick wooden beams, the mats, everything- were starting to warp and distort in the same way.

"Operator", Morpheus called out, very careful to keep any trace of fear out of his voice. "Take us out of here, _now_."

"I'm sorry", she couldn't help but whisper. "Every damn time I lose focus, _this_ starts happening! I can't control it!"

"Trinity", he corrected her in a stern tone he rarely used. "You must regain control. Every time you become upset over this, it happens even faster. You have to stop it."

Whatever response she might have made was cut short when whoever the Operator was finally woke up. They were pulled out just in time to miss the roof and floor above and beneath them melting together into an unrecognizable mire of chaos.

-

They took him into a room without windows. Without any illumination at all except for a single lightbulb hanging overhead, and the faint green glow of several computer screens, hooked up to an upright table. The first thing the general couldn't help but think of was Frankenstein's birthplace.

Agent Brown walked past him unperturbed. "Please remove your upper clothing."

Peterson looked up at him as though he'd turned into a large spider. "You're kiddin' me."

Beside the table, Jones, the Agent that shared his muscular jaw, wheeled on him sternly. "You said you wanted to help us. If you're having second thoughts, speak them now."

Peterson shook his head. "Nope. Just a bit spooked that that's the first thing you would ask. Okay… let's do this then."

Moments later, Brown and Jones helped him to hook his paralyzed legs up to the table's straps along with his arms, then lowering an ugly mechanical arm studded by three metal circles onto his naked chest, almost like an electric razor. After that, Jones went ahead and removed a small capsule from his vest.

"Try not to be alarmed, Mr. Peterson", Brown commented dully. "This may be rather painful for you."

At the same moment, Jones released the small electronic bug inside onto Peterson's waist. Ignoring Peterson's irresistible alarm at the sight of the multi-legged freak, it slowly located his belly button as if using primitive sonar, then descended.

Several seconds after it had vanished from sight, Brown made the final connections, leaving the procedure just a single button-press from commencement. "Are you ready?"

Peterson responded with only a weak nod, but that was enough. Brown pressed the button, began what he knew would be the most painful part of the operation. Not perturbed in the slightest however, they both stood and watched the monitors, ignoring the involuntary screams blasting from the human's mouth. If that nurse was still there, she would likely assume they were torturing him and not want to become involved.

-

Everything seemed to be happening at once now. One second, he had merely been subject to an unhealthy amount of raw voltage, pulsing through his temples. The next, it was as though the entire world had opened up like the skin of an orange.

Trinity's father saw the obnoxiously green coding once again, this time all around him. The table he was still strapped to was made of it. The two men he thought he knew were made of it. _He _was made of it. He could that now better than the others- he was watching his own brain.

Contrary to what the general would have expected, it was not a static image. Like all humans, the inner mind was the one bit of him that could not be represented by any existing coding. It was only expressed as a simple gathering of green electricity instead of numbers, rapidly fluctuating even as he thought.

Looking outwards, he saw more. Everywhere he looked, beyond the coding of the building they were in, there were more sparkles of green electricity. Some walking, some sitting, eating, talking, laughing. Each was encased in a bipedal body of code, constrained by it- the arcs of neural voltage never escaped the cranium.

Immediately, his attention returned to his own sparking of energy- something was being done to it. As he watched his own brain from outside it, new lines of code descended directly into it. He saw his own neural energy reacting violently to the program, knocking a great deal of the coding out and away from him.

_Rejecting the program? _That was no good- this, he knew, had to be what the spooks had told him of. _Well, no more of that. I keep to the deal, and I'll _**_be_**_ a 'spook'. _Focusing what concentration he could against the intensity of the voltage, he tried his best to reduce the randomness of the electric fluctuations. Beside him, he saw through the code that the quieter of the two he'd been speaking to- Jones, was it?- was leaning closer to him and doing something with the machinery around the table.

This time, far more of the code stuck. He saw it filtering through his cranium of coding, forming a sphere of the stuff around the electric green bolts. The moment the sphere contracted and came into contact with the core of the voltage however, the blackest of voids took him beyond all dimension of consciousness and being.

-

You know, I've been waiting a long time to say this, Trin… 

For the third time that day, Trinity surveyed the sparring program along with her clothes. She looked up and down the walls and beams carefully, maintaining a tight focus a lot like squinting, and dared to feel a small measure of relief.

_Nothing. _Not the slightest hint of the collapse the program had exhibited earlier. She finally breathed out, idly feeling the solid wooden beams for what they really were. Nothing out of the ordinary- the walls weren't melting, or _bleeding_, or otherwise malfunctioning the way they had whenever she had lost focus since Patch's diagnosis of her.

_For the longest time, I thought I was in love with you._

-Of course, this was still just training. The program's code, by nature, was infinitely more malleable that the coding of the far vaster Matrix program. By learning to stay stable in here, she could effectively guarantee that her previous accident wouldn't occur on missions.

It scared her, though. It scared her like hell. The very idea of what she had seen had previously begun an infinite cycle Morpheus, Ghost, and even Patch had all warned her about, along with the possibility that, if her condition escalated, it would become irreversible, forever barring her from the use of normal programs as well as the Matrix…

She sighed to the emptiness in exasperation. _What the hell is wrong with me?_ _More importantly, how do I deal with it?_ She thought better of an urge to kick the closest beam in frustration, wanting to do anything to get her hands on the problem, beat it to a pulp.

He lied to us, Trinity. He tricked us! 

Ignore it. Ignore him. Ignore the memory. Enough of Morpheus' calming exercises for one day. With no disrespect for her surrogate father and mentor, she had always felt the most direct way to work off pain of any sort was to keep busy. Beating the crap out of something- _anything_- might well work better than just lying there in despair.

"Operator, you there?"

A short pause later, Link's voice came back, issuing from everywhere and nowhere. "Hey there Trinity. Listen, Morpheus is just setting our course now, he won't be able to plug back in for-"

"No, that's okay. I don't need Morpheus for this. Just load up variant F of this program."

_All I ever do is what he tells me to do. If I had to choose between that and the Matrix… I choose the Matrix!_

Another nervous pause, even longer than the last, followed. "Trin… you sure? I'm not Patch, but I thought the idea was to take it easy, right?"

Amazing how easily she spoke back to him coldly, snappishly. Almost comforting. "Nice to see you think so highly of my abilities, Link. For me, this _is _taking it easy. Now, hurry up and show me Agent Wimp."

Faster than the other responses, the program shifted in compliance. It didn't have to change much- merely become a room dedicated to the combat purposes of humanity's greatest fighting arts, rather than the meditative ones.

One more change- a program in the room with her. As far as she could tell, no one in Zion knew exactly who had coined the derogatory name of this scaled-back copy of an automated Agent program from a much earlier version of the Matrix. Fitting him (it?) perfectly, the program and its derogatory name had inspired propagation as a common practice tool for all Potentials such as herself. Neo had never fought it, and now he would never need to- he could defeat the real ones with comparative ease.

Which was not to say that Agent 'Wimp', looking generic even among the standards of Agents, was any kind of pushover for a human. Having practiced with it regularly for nearly ten years, both Trinity and Morpheus knew how to counter and compensate for the automated program's scaled-back strength, how to outmaneuver it with tricks a real, sentient Agent would easily recognize and counter with ruthless ease. But for potentials recently freed, such as that Allison girl… even this enemy would seem agile and deadly.

Welcome to the real world, eh baby? 

Without waiting for it to fully load, she shut out the voice and ran the distance between them and laid into the program with both legs, knocking it onto its spotless black shoes with the first hit, and sending it spinning to the floor with the second.

For once copying the reaction speed of the real thing, Agent Wimp returned to its feet, not showing any signs of wear. It came at her with an uppercut that seemed to glide across the floor, made possible by its speed, but she faded with the blow and drove her knee into its block. Two suspended punches to the head later, Agent Wimp fell to the floor once again.

She felt and pushed the nearby wooden beam again, satisfied. This was what she'd wanted to prove- to herself along with the others. She _could_ do it, could fight and act in the Matrix without the adverse effects they'd all witnessed, so long as she kept her mind focused. Morpheus' exercises might have left her nerves rattled, but this was something she was comfortable with. It wasn't likely she would ever have to do the former on a mission anyway.

Another sortie with the program later, she looked up at the ceiling. "There you go, Link. Tell Morpheus and Neo I'm ready whenever the next mission starts."

The Operator's hesitation betrayed his uncertainty, but he eventually spoke up. "Nice work. We're still a few hours to broadcast depth, but I'll tell him to take a look before we start."

"You do that". Finally. _Finally, _the nightmare's end was in sight. She would sooner die than become a burden to those who relied upon her- especially not Neo or Morpheus. For a moment, she idly wondered which 'him' Link was going to fetch. Probably Morpheus- her oldest mentor would have the final say.

You never answered me before… 

It was then she noticed that Agent Wimp had returned to its feet, making ready for another round. Link had forgotten to shut it off, but no matter- Trinity felt energized enough to fend this one off all day long. To prove the theory, she blocked and dodged the resulting attacks for several seconds before kicking it squarely in the chest, breaking one of the beams into splinters before the program reset it.

-

For a second, Program 31B privately feared he might have overdone it- the massive power needed to properly integrate two radically different codes with one another 'in-system' could not be easily survived by even the sturdiest of human constitutions. He had known firsthand that ex-general Peterson was a fortuitous human by his species' abysmal standards… but the surges of voltage pounding his temples now might be enough to leave them with only a charred corpse.

Thankfully, he began to see signs shortly afterward that abated his inner fear of risk he had taken. While the human's body had previously thrashed against the restraints, the mad frenzy now became a far more rhythmic movement of the entire body as one.

Looking at Peterson closely in code, he saw the writing of a program's governing AI interspersed with the unreadable green bolts, one serving as a kind of bunker for the other. Occasional streams of green would still occasionally spew forth, but the wild sparks were considerably more focused, and the entire storm pulsed to the beat with the AI. Still partly human, but governed by the code Brown and Jones knew by heart.

To say nothing of the physical changes. If a stranger were to look at the human stretched out on the table before them, he would simply assume Peterson had borrowed the suit, pants, and other accoutrements of an Agent. The structure of his body remained exactly the same on the outside, but that notion, if ever it had existed, was shattered when Peterson's eyes opened behind the shades Brown had slipped him.

_Everything _had changed. He now knew what these men in front of him were, what it was they did, and why they did it. He knew the real world, of what and why it was. He knew why it was Morpheus had taken his daughter away from him. He _felt_ a thousand times stronger than he had been.

This did not change Peterson's feelings on the issue very much. Even if it did, half his brain and body was no longer his own. His eyes descended, met those of the program responsible for his change. So quickly, he could already feel Brown's train of thought, the instinctive connection that allowed Agent programs to operate on identical wavelengths… most of the time.

"So this 'Neo' is the real enemy", he finally spoke stiffly, already having peeked at the records made and distributed throughout the Source. While still recognizable as his own, the voice was near devoid of the usual sarcasm, rage, or any other emotion.

Knowing there no need to unbuckle the straps, Jones simply continued the line of confirmation. "Correct. Beyond his abilities, he has ever been integral to the morale of the Zion infiltrators throughout every version. Defeat him, and the Reloading will be unnecessary. Our further existence will be secured."

Peterson spoke again, breaking the restraints apart one by one, and emerging from the flatbed table that had changed everything about him so much. "In that case, you've made the right decision in replacing the late program 66S. From this point on, everything we do will be one step further to destroying the anomaly."

Brown nodded politely, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief it had all gone so smoothly- both the transformation and adjustment were stated to require the subject to be _completely_ willing and voluntary, and even then nothing was guaranteed. "Then you have formed a new plan already, I take it. Welcome aboard, _Agent_ Peterson."

-


	6. Six

**Six **

-

The Matrix enveloped Neo once again, overtaking all sight and sense of the reality of the _Nebuchadnezzar_. Even looking around the sunlit alleyway, looking at something completely unrelated, he still felt distinctly uneasy about the vacant chair he knew was sitting across from him- the chair that Trinity normally used.

A moment later, after Link was certain the coast was clear, Morpehus followed via the hard line in the same getup he'd worn when they'd first met. But they were not here to repeat that particular action this time. This time, their potential ally had found them instead of the other way around.

The biggest wall, he noted distantly from where he stood, was a nice piece of work in regards to its purpose. While the tall, gritty-looking edifice bore an extremely artistic depiction of a massive three-headed Chimera, it was also decorated with enough random graffiti and unintelligible punk scrawl so that no one would think it different from the rest. Near the top, almost past where any human could reach, someone had written in green: 'The mind is a crazy thing'.

Without even having to give it his full concentration, Neo pointed to it… and then pointed to a nearly-blank wall across the way from it, avoiding the Chimera-wall's code. He saw Morpheus stare at the trap for some time before following him up to the other one.

"A 'loop snarl'", he finally explained as he knocked on the blank wall, trying his best not to sound condescending. "Sends whatever processor that updates this sector into an infinite task loop that makes it overtask itself and eventually blow out."

Surprised, the older man looked to the very top of the wall. "You've seen it before?"

"In PCs. Never like this. Whoever this is must be pretty good at destroying unwanted code."

As if to demonstrate his own aptitude, he let fly at the portion of wall indicated by the code with the strongest punch he could muster, like hitting a big green shatterpoint. The wall did not crumble right away, but instead began with its topmost area vanishing. The others followed shortly, opening the way to another back alley, this one with one visible difference- it had never been written on or lived in.

They had barely taken ten steps in when the wall rebuilt itself behind them, looking the same from the inside as it did on the outside. "A talented coder", Morpheus observed as they continued through several turns. "But this is something we have not seen before- a potential contacting us. Another sign of change."

Having replicated the other man's pace so far, Neo slowed down and cleared his throat, troubled by the mention of the word 'potential', along with something the Oracle had told him one month before. "Wait. Before we go on… I wanted to ask you about something."

Stopping, turning, he faced Neo and nodded. "Another trap?"

"No." He ought to know perfectly well it wasn't that. "Maybe it's not my place to ask."

"But it is." Relatively certain they were no longer in a hurry, Morpheus removed his circular shades and looked the younger man straight in the eye, personally. "How do I know that? Because you are The One. You can now understand more _whats _and _wheres _and _whos_ than I. So the only questions I can still answer for you are _why_ and _how_. You have the right to know."

Understanding completely, he felt his appreciation for Morpheus' abilities rise up another notch. "You knew I would ask why, or how. Then, why? You found me, trained me, helped to become who I am. But we're still just freeing a few potentials, following up on leads like the one set by this programmer. Why did you keep following the Oracle's path, even when there was no result?"

He took a deep breath, and suddenly looked to Neo like he was a little sad. "There are many answers to that. The most efficient that comes to mind is- we had nowhere else to turn."

He understood that a little, and began to walk again, at a more contemplative pace. The horrors of the true reality had driven Cypher mad with fear of it. Thinking that there was nothing past that, that nothing would ever change… The belief in The One may just have been the thing that kept Morpheus and those around him sane.

"Past that", Morpheus continued, walking with him further down the alley, "I _knew_ it was real. It is difficult to explain to anyone who has never experienced that impulse, somehow I knew in my heart that we would find you. I will not deny that when I first met the Oracle, I was lost. I saw further than the others, and saw nothing but despair ahead of us. The prophecy gave me purpose again. I became a ship captain so I could search."

Another bit of graffiti he'd seen on the alley walls flashed to mind- 'hope is comforting'. But there was a sinister side to it as well. "Morpheus… you know that the Oracle is a program, don't you? A part of the Matrix?"

He stopped again. "How do _you_ know that, Neo?"

If against his normal thought processes, his head canted over and focused on the ground. How to explain to Morpheus the evidence that even the Oracle was a part of the system, really no different than the Agent programs he'd been trained to defeat? "I haven't seen her since my 'awakening'. When we meet again, I'll know."

A few minutes later, they happened upon the first and seemingly only denizen of the hidden alleyway- a longhaired man in disheveled clothes and wide eyes. Neo frowned at the man staring back at them as though he thought they were gods. Something was terribly wrong here- the man looked so familiar… _too_ familiar.

Yet, like so many premonitions, this one proved to be useless. In the time it Neo to shout 'he's bugged!' the changes had already begun.

The hobo-looking man's chest bulged out and his face spasmed more wildly than any normal man could. Both men recognized it instantly- the visual conception of what happened when an Agent program traveled into a human plugged into the Matrix.

Without waiting any further, Neo went on full alert and saw more familiar code descending on their location. But who was the program now appearing in front of them? Jones, or Brown?

Whoever it was, he didn't give them the benefit of the first move. Before the Agent's face was even fully formed, he ran ahead of Morpheus and leapt into a flying kick at their mutual enemy's face. Just a few moments more…

Neither one saw the arm suddenly snap up and grab Neo's outstretched leg until it had been caught between the man's fully-formed head, and his shoulder. As if that was not suprising enough, the black haired Agent- one they had never seen before- twisted his even lips into a small smirk. "Gotcha."

It may not have been completely fair to call it a mistake on the part of The One- still shocked by several things over the past few seconds- did not react quite as fast as he could have, allowing the new Agent to bend over and hurl Neo backwards into the brick wall behind him.

However, that was more than close enough. The brick wall did not shatter itself or Neo's skull, instead caving in on the flying body like the most pliable of putty before shooting him back out of it at twice the velocity, both his legs aimed for the program's back even as he advanced upon Morpheus with hatred steadily clouding his expression.

The double kick knocked Peterson away, but he recovered with a familiar military roll that put him face-to-face with the two once again, one arm supporting him as he returned to his feet. It was just about then that his partners, the ones Neo had grown so accustomed to defeating, emerged from the dank alleyways and stood on either side.

"Nice work on that one", Neo commented, once again trying to mock their efforts to trap them. "Not smart, but very strong."

The machines' new recruit didn't reply- he was too busy focusing an unmistakable glare of pure hate right through his dark shades at Morpheus. Instead, Jones gestured back to the newly formed brick mural blocking the way they had come with one hand, drawing his gun with the other. "No escape. Your termination is inevitable this time."

"We'll see."

With that, they attacked. As usual, Brown and Jones ineffectually assailed The One with the best moves they could muster. But Peterson, disobeying orders, went straight for a far weaker target- Morpheus. Tied up in the tangle of lethal arms and legs, Neo could only shout a warning and watch as it was proved futile- he laid into the bald visionary with a fury none had ever seen before in a program, a fury no human could match.

-

Not for the first time, Link felt incredibly helpless seeing what was happening to his boss and his friend. Providing commentary appropriate to their situation ('shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!') did nothing to stop the cascade of coding that showed every detail of the unfair contest.

It wasn't looking good, not at all. Not only had the Agent programs- 31B, 57J, and the new one- managed to bait and trap Morpheus and Neo in a dead end of code with no exit lines for miles, but they had brought lots of backup. Eight, nine, ten columns of numbers were cascading down towards the boundaries of area, which translated in his eyes as ten squad cars, at least two armed men per car. He dared not interrupt his friend's concentration to warn them.

As for Morpheus, he doubted a warning would be any use. The new Agent was all over him, tossing him into hard stone walls much as Brown had Trinity, punching him fiercely in the gut. To his horror, he caught a glimpse of dark blood emerging from Morpheus' true body. Either this new boy was just running on adrenalin… or what Link had fearfully suspected on seeing his code was true.

Link didn't have to turn away from the screen- he felt Trinity running onto the main deck already as worried as he was. "No way out?" she asked him sharply, looking at the same screen of code.

"None. They sure did their homework on this one. Closest line is the one they used, and now…" his voice trailed off in despair, knowing that she saw the police blockade around the fake wall just as well as he did.

"Boot me up, then."

Even as his mind saw what had to be done, he wheeled on her. "You crazy? Morpheus said-"

"Morpheus never expected this", she interrupted with no room for argument, already fully strapped in by the time she finished speaking. "Do it."

"Trin, they've got the damn thing blockaded! You can't get through!"

Whereas her mouth had been set into that hard line that offered no room for dissension, it now twisted with terse emotion for the men she needed to help. "Oh, I'm not going _through_."

-

Footsteps in perfect lockstep woke Morpheus just in time. The last blow he'd taken had almost been too much- he almost imagined he could feel loose cartilage matter inside his own head.

He saw only the two approaching shoes from the cement floor, the perfectly polished black sheen shared by all Agent programs. But he knew which one was coming his way.

If not his strength, then he would have been amazed by Peterson's single-mindedness. Ignoring all accounts of his partner's distress fighting Neo, he had gone after the weaker fighter with a zeal he had previously thought only humans capable of. He was the one who had been doing all the damage so far. _It makes no difference_, he acknowledged to himself silently, remembering his defeat to Smith one month prior, _I am not The One, only the man who found him. It's a foolish move to fight on the ground of an enemy's choosing- we must get out of here._

The walls towering them, though, yielded no answers. Just like before, the Machines had sealed off the passageway their prey had entered by, forcing both men into battle.

_No choice but to fight_. Just as Peterson reached punching distance, Morpheus spun both his legs around as he returned to his feet, hoping at the least to make the incensed program back off a little. Instead, he grabbed the second leg and threw Morpheus into the opposite wall, and then leapt towards the new indentation, pinning his target inside of it by placing an arm upon his throat.

"Suffer", he gritted out over the noise of Morpheus choking. "Just like I did."

Black spots in front of his eyes. Blood. Neo's panicked cry sounded like it was coming across a canyon. But that was strange- he was actually right there, kicking Peterson in the side and knocking him away…

His senses deprived, he barely noticed the new wall sliding across his vision, dividing the alley into two halves. If there was a visual hint of déjà vu, it must have happened after he sank to the floor, unconscious.

-

Neo met the sudden shift of the alley's makeup with a mix of equal parts worry and resignation. On one hand, he no longer had to protect his mentor from the new Agent, who had moments before seemed completely focused on killing him as painfully as possible. On the other, they were cut off from each other now- he couldn't see what was going on behind that wall without sparing more concentration than he could afford, and he knew his enemies had done that for a reason.

The change left him alone, face-to-face and eye-to-eye with the new, black-haired Agent. As if triggered by a silent signal from Jones and Brown, Neo and Peterson launched into each other with unbridled ferocity, neither having any further reason to care about anything outside the fight.

Ten seconds and thirty kicks and punches later, Neo fell back slightly. It wasn't the strength of this Agent that threw him- he'd seen enough now to know that while it was greater than the other two, it was still, as Morpheus had so aptly put it once, made to function in a world which was based on simple rules, like gravity and kinetic force.

Rather, it was the pure _emotion_ put into every counterblow that made him look up with a newfound determination. Just as though he was fighting a human, every strike was delivered with a warm-blooded strength, which no doubt stemmed from the gnashing hatred he visibly put into it. It was like fighting _Smith_ all over again, fighting someone who despised absolutely everything about you, and let it show in the way they fought.

Narrowing his gaze, he tried a new approach, opening with a rising sweep kick before grabbing Peterson's onrushing fist and separating his other leg from the surly bonds of gravity. At the same time, he threw Peterson downward by the arm into the concrete face first, somersaulting in midair into one of the nearby walls for a spring kick.

Now the walls were so close to each other, springing off of them was easy for him even if he didn't actually fly, darting in and out of range off the walls. He managed to land several of these hit-and-run strikes on Peterson before the enraged program got wise to the trick, and pounded both walls at once, one fist to each enough to obliterate every square inch of brick for several meters. When that happened, Neo drew his stolen weapon mid-flight, and fired.

It was actually Brown's gun. He'd pilfered it off him while they were scuffling earlier, remembering the first ever Agent kill he'd seen was actually by Trinity. Both arms extended to the walls, there should have been no way for Peterson to get out of the way.

He didn't. Instead, Neo saw the other end of what he had shown countless deluded police officers up until now- the bullet slowing to a crawl in midair and stopping, flat end facing the user, before uselessly dropping to the floor.

Agent Jones smiled. The wall behind him surged and exploded. Whatever reservations Neo might have had over Trinity being here, back in the Matrix, they were gone now. He leaped backwards and kicked Jones in the gut before anyone could react, least of all the new Agent.

"Perfect timing", he whispered even as their opponents got organized again. "Morpheus is hurt, I need you to get him out of here."

Any argument she would have offered was silenced by the sight of their mutual mentor, who was doubled over in the corner and more defenseless than he had ever been. If Peterson got half a chance, he'd do a lot more than just _kick_ Morpheus when he was down.

He didn't seem too predisposed towards Trinity either. For a moment, Neo though he was too late; the black-haired agent was between them and Morpheus, but Trinity was going to charge him anyway. Then, to his amazement, every defense and hostility in him seemed to evaporate into a stance of both confusion and vulnerability, saying a single name in absolute wonder:

"AnneMarie?"

Wasting no time, Trinity kicked the man in the chin, rocking him back and breaking his shades. By the time he hit the ground, Neo was between his comrades and the remaining two Agents. But even they seemed to have lost their enthusiasm for fighting- they knew perfectly well that without their new ally, they stood no chance against The One.

The Agents weren't really his concern though. The thing that drew Neo's eyes away from his foes, the thing that brought all his misgivings back in full force and memory, was the method by which Trinity left the sealed alleyway- by melting a tunnel barely her own height into the rock, the exit hole still oozing the very same chaotic code from before.

"There will be another time, _Neo_", he heard the new Agent grit out from behind bloody teeth, in a most un-machine like fashion, his eyes still radiating bitterness even while dazed. "I promise you…"

-

Long after the anomaly had departed through the melted-looking hole made by the woman, Program 31B finally stooped over Program 67P's form, which had been slumped on the bare white concrete ever since he had struggled to say those last few words to The One, and made certain he was not too badly injured to follow their reversion back to the Metacortex building.

He wasn't, but there was a noticeable delay. Enough of one to give Agents Brown and Jones some more time to speak to one another without a third mind intruding. Enough for Jones to speak his own.

Seeing the criticism coming from far off, Brown headed it off at once. "I understand the problems perfectly, there is no need to give voice to them."

Jones tilted his head over the circular desk in disagreement. "If that were so, we would have already deleted him. He is nothing but a failed experiment, and confirmation of what we should have remembered- we are superior."

Distraught, Brown looked as though he was about to say more, but Agent Peterson popped into existence right then, seemingly oblivious to his injuries.

Evidently, Brown noted, the man who had once been Robert Peterson had felt their doubts about him as well, since the first words out of his mouth were: "Give me another shot. I will kill him for sure next time."

Trying to ignore Jones' thinly veiled disgust towards this thing they had created, Brown stared into the man's broken shades, still not refreshed by the next system update. "Of this, we have no doubt. You have demonstrated powers similar to the anomaly. This is the only reason you are still _alive_ at this time. You let the woman escape."

Peterson thought for a moment, then said "I was just a little startled. She's-"

"She is _nothing_", Brown interrupted him with no small measure of anger. "She is not your progeny, not anymore. She is now a threat to the stability of our world. And _you_ are no longer her father."

Back in sync with his one true colleague, Jones' voice reinforced their simultaneous frustration with his weak human frailties, which had hampered him, even when directly monitored and controlled by a program. "If you cannot bring yourself to eliminate her, then you are useless to us."

"One more chance", he repeated upon seeing Jones advance on him, his voice starting to show a tinge of desperation even through his emotional control. "Don't forget, you created me to remove the anomaly."

"Which you have failed to do."

"So far", Peterson countered sharply. Then, he produced something from his hand neither of them had seen before. While it was truly nothing more than a bunch of coding, even machine eyes could see it as something more substantial- a projection hovering over Peterson's hand. A rough copy of something far larger.

Sizing up the construct, Brown felt whatever passed for faith in his mind restored. "You wrote this program yourself?"

"Most of it", Peterson amended, blissfully exhaling. "While we were planning the alley ambush and bait. I had to copy an existing image texturing, or it would have taken much longer than that to write."

"The purpose?", Jones asked, still not convinced of Peterson's value.

Peterson did not smile, his emotional control back in full effect. "A trap to remove the anomaly, as promised. I placed it so far out that not even _he_ can return from it. No phones, just a single, one-way line that will self-destruct once used. And our own passage, of course."

Now it was Jones' turn to eye both the construct, and its creator, with newfound regard. Throughout all of their earlier planning sessions in this building, it had never even occurred to the two of them that _removing_ the despised anomaly from the machine mainframe was not necessarily the same thing as _killing_ him.

"This shows promise", Brown found the breath to admit. "Show us more."

-

Despite the fact that they hadn't faced a single attack since escaping the alleyway, Neo still didn't feel safe enough to slow down past a brisk jog. The hardline was finally in sight, an old-fashioned dial phone left behind in a building that looked condemned. Finally stopping in the dusty room, Trinity dropped Morpheus' unconscious body on the boards, having exhausted herself from running the whole way with him slung over her shoulder, and the previous fight.

"Trin", Neo spoke to her, at a loss for how to put this. "You saved our lives back there. But… you're not…"

"Don't say a damn word", she panted heavily. "There was no other way in. Had… to embrace it. Had to… save you. Because…"

Inwardly beaming, he lifted the phone, knowing Link was probably sweating bullets after they had lost contact. "After you."

"Actually, I think we should let _him_ go first", she joked weakly, indicating Morpheus' body. "He needs medical… attention a lot more than we do."

_Physical medicine, anyway_, the dark thought intruded before Neo could silence it. "Right."

A moment later, they had pressed Morpheus' ear to the receiver and shuttled him back to the waking world, where he would no doubt awaken to similar injuries. Knowing it didn't make much of difference at this point; Neo placed the receiver to his own ear next, and looked at her not with the eyes of The One, but a mere young man. "And thank you. If Morpheus gets angry-"

"He won't. He'll understand."

He smiled, and let the proverbial gateway take him.

-

Two out, and one to go. She had done it. Reflecting Neo's warm smile now that no one was around to see it, Trinity walked forward and grabbed the receiver eagerly.

It hadn't been easy work, melting those tunnels. Just like all the other tasks Morpheus had trained her for, it was entirely an effort of the mind rather than the body.

But for this task… she had had to abandon all of the training, all the mental discipline that had been built up over twelve years. It had proven as difficult as developing that mental discipline in the first place, and she knew only fervent love for Neo and Morpheus' friendship had seen her through.

After that obstacle, the brick wall she had been faced with parted like hot butter. No doubt she'd caused a lot of other glitches throughout the Matrix she didn't even know about, chaotically twisting the code just like before. Fine. More problems for those bastard machines to deal with. The brick walls had melted apart…

_Oh, god!_

… Much as the receiver in her hand was doing now. The entire upper section went limp, and the wire connection followed suit, melting into the floorboards that shifted beneath her boots.

_What the hell! I thought I had this under control! _Unfortunately, Trinity could see several answers to that panicked question. The control she thought she had mastered in the sparring program required full concentration, and was more exhausting than she would care to admit. Not only was she tired, but she had deliberately lost control only moments before. The more panic, the worse this would become.

_Dumbass! _Dumb, and arrogant, to think she could switch it on and off like a machine!

"Trin?", Link's familiar voice crackled in her ears. "Trinity?"

Then Neo's voice. Louder, more focused and more concerned for her. "What's wrong? Why aren't you coming out?"

Even her vocal cords had seemingly betrayed her. She couldn't speak, couldn't admit that this happening, and that it was happening due to her recklessness...

_Don't tell him! Don't show him this weakness! Don't-_

The words burst forth at the same time her voice- and the floor- cracked. "Neo. I-I'm trapped. The hardline melted, and now everything else is- everything I get close to… I'm trapped in the Matrix."

_And maybe, just maybe, I don't deserve to leave._

-

M: I finally got a chance to watch Matrix Revolutions all the way through yesterday, and it gave me a handful of nice new ideas for my remaining chapters. Wasn't asawful as I was led to believe either, although it's certainly the worst of the three. In particular, they must have run out of ideas for a more extreme final fight than the original Burly Brawl, and chose to rip off Dragon Ball Z instead. Hopefully,theultimate battle between Neo and Peterson (there _will_ be one)won't end up in the same predicatablefashion. Think, brain!


	7. Seven

Seven 

**-**

"**No!"**

His serenity gone, Neo slammed his fists off two of the screens before Link could stop him. Neither left any cracks thankfully, but he shooed Neo back as best he could all the same.

"Easy!", he shouted back in his loudest tone. "You break these, I can guarantee we won't be able to get her out of there!"

Horrified at what he'd almost done, he looked into his hands for a moment, and then gazed at the code more intently than ever, able to read it perfectly, as well as just how screwed up it was getting.

"Trinity", Link started back in a careful tone. "Try and remember. Remember those exercises Morpheus taught you."

Of course, Link knew this would be much easier if Morpheus was actually _conscious_. He would have been able to walk her through it no sweat. As it was, the best they could hope for was that the rapid coagulation of the coding for the building would slow down a tad.

"I'm going back in", he heard Neo's voice from behind, sounding every bit as determined as she had when she had demanded to be plugged in less than half an hour before. "I'll see what I can do for her."

This time, Link obeyed as fast as he could. "Better do it fast, man, can't stay at broadcast depth forever."

Strapped back into the chair, Neo nodded to him, understanding completely- just as when Smith had interrupted his escape, the _Nebuchadnezzar _had a good weapon to use against the inevitable Sentinel attackers, but wouldn't dare use it when it's first mate was irrevocably trapped in the Matrix. If the Sentinels came, if they found them, Link would have to make the choice between Trinity's life… and all of theirs.

Neo didn't envy him that. He plugged back in without another word, leaving Link alone to watch the sensors for the attack that would be Trinity's death knell, and listen to the earphones for what they would say to each other.

"…Trinity!"

"Neo. I'm… very sorry. I didn't think it would happen this way."

"Don't say that. You can get control, you just have to focus!"

"I've _tried_, Neo. Believe me I've tried. I can't seem to-"

"NO! We're not leaving you! _Try again_! There's another exit line just down the street!"

"Do you think it's _easy_ for me to say this? I'm trapped because of _my _weakness, and I hate myself for it!"

A long silence followed. Link winced and braced himself for an alert that would forcibly end their little chat. Despite himself, Link was inwardly amazed- Neo and Trinity were the most stalwart people he knew. Their calmness, their ability to take any disaster in stride had sometimes scared him. Yet here, he felt more emotion in their agonized words to each other than he had ever thought them capable of.

After what seemed an eternity, Neo's voice came again. "…You're not weak, Trinity. You're the strongest person that I know."

"Yeah right."

"No, you really are. You never back down from anything, you never show a hint of emotion except for me. I think we both know why I'm the exception…"

Link certainly expected to hear the sound of a kiss, but what he got was an alert siren. Just as he and Neo had been both expecting and dreading, the sensor showed a roaming 'squiddy' machine closing fast.

"Hate to break up this little chat", he barked into his microphone, "but we got company. Neo, you'd better get your butt out of there pronto."

By design or just bad luck, the _Nebuchanezzar_ had been facing _towards _the approaching Sentinel. By the time Link got the ship turned around and up to speed, he heard Neo's voice come back. "No, I'm not leaving her here!"

"Neo, don't-"

"We'll keep looking for another exit line, Link. Keep them busy as long as you can!"

"Will do, _boss_."

With that, he ran to the top deck and threw the engines to full. Feeling the acceleration run through his teeth, he indulged in just a moment of exhilaration- this was the first time he had piloted the Neb without the stern supervision of Morpheus, or orders to rely on the autopilot to help train him.

Autopilot wouldn't help them now. It was designed to fly through whatever openings were widest in a trip that would culminate at Zion. _No_, Link thought grimly to himself, twisting the ship through the tightest manageable passages throughout the massive subway system, _machines can't save us now. Only humans. More precisely, just how often I listened to Morpheus in all those practice sessions._

Banking right to afford a narrower profile, he piloted the ship through another broken gate, with no luck. The 'squiddy' was tucked right in behind him, a far more maneuverable craft without all those computers and living quarters weighing it down.

Cursing its speed, Link nearly bit his tongue once the ship shot out from the tight passage into a new area of the ruined station. The hover units on the bottom of the craft had kicked it up way over how high he had wanted to go, and it now slammed down on the ground with bone-jarring force, audibly scraping the bottom engine cluster.

He cringed at that. _Just have to hope Morpheus will forgive me. Pity that thing doesn't have hover units to kick it… hey, that might work!_

Hauling the craft around again, he built up the ship's speed back up to its previous limit, this time making straight for a long-abandoned subway car lying on its side. Closer than ever, the Sentinel also increased its speed to what Link assumed was as fast as the multilegged machines could go.

Unable to stop himself, Link gripped the controls and yelled out as the _Nebuchadnezzar_'s hover units once again kicked itself up and over the obstacle, into midair. The Sentinel was not so lucky- its engines were maneuverable, but they were jet engines, not hover. It plowed directly into the subway car at top speed, falling away from the wreckage in a weak rollout on its many tentacles.

He knew better than to stop and celebrate- the thing was damaged, but still alive. The same trick wouldn't work twice. He banked hard left to head for the closest exit, but in doing so overbalanced the craft, tilting it too far sideways and making it child's play for the Sentinel's six remaining tentacles to grab out of midair.

The sudden stop banged Link's head off the console, and his face paled as he saw one tentacle trying to drill its way through the top. The Sentinel was holding the larger craft upright like a ripe melon, using its own body to smother the engines' thrust. All he could do was shift power back and forth between the two clusters, and hope that-

Then, the drilling noise abruptly cut off, replaced by a far louder crashing noise that rocked the ship harder than Link's earlier stunts had. Nearly falling over, he glanced back at the monitors. He chuckled at the familiar engine arrangement along the superstructure, and the curved front end that was hardier than any Sentinel. "Thank you very much, Bane."

The somber voice that came back to him was distorted by static, but still conveyed a kind of humor. "I figure when every cop and Agent in the Megacity is doing something else instead of looking for us, you guys have to be involved, right?"

While it was true they were never exactly friends, Link had just now recognized the ramming tactic that had destroyed the Sentinel, along with the ship and crew that made it famous. He knew only a few of the people on the long prowed hovercraft called _Caduceus_- captain Ballard, old man Scrap, Bane, their bearded pilot and the one responsible for the ramming just now, and his friend and Operator, Malachi. _Caduceus_ was one of the few ships they had that was capable of ramming the Sentinels with minimal damage to itself, and its nickel-iron prow had been customized to that specific purpose.

"So", Malachi's thin, wiry voice spoke to him as he hauled his own ship around to pace the larger craft like a nestling to its mother. "Where's Mr. Invincible? Off in Kansas again?"

He turned away to muffle his sigh over the communicator. He didn't even have to meet their captain to know this was going to be bad. "Yeah. Pirate signal gave us away, thought we'd had it for a moment."

"Come on." Bane's voice again. "Just pull him out of there, shut off the broadcast and we can get the hell out of this dump."

Another despairing sigh, this one unquenchable. "Wish I could, Bane. I _really_ wish I could."

-

Though no spot could be considered truly secure, the two hovercraft and their pilots had eventually settled on a relatively well-hidden position- a mine, one of the few ones left, tunneled into the earth. While Sentinels saw through darkness like it was daytime and could travel passages far narrower than anything their craft could manage, they had hoped that the exposed iron and ruby ore would hamper the machines' ability to trace the broadcast.

That was the hope. But that hadn't stopped Link from doing everything short of threatening disconnection to get Neo out of the Matrix. As before, Trinity could not follow him. Already, Link figured they were getting close to pushing the record for Trinity's pirate signal, keeping her in that programmed reality even as the crews gathered on the _Caduceus_'s meager conference room. The first mate's seat, the one Trinity normally would have sat in, was occupied by Bane.

"Didn't want to say this, but I think there's no other choice", Malachi spoke up from his spot near their sullen captain. While Bane's little friend could be every bit as snarky and sarcastic as the rest of them, both men usually drew the line at disobeying their captain or their commander. "I know it hurts, but you won't survive another day broadcasting like this."

"We're not leaving", Neo said, not slamming his hands down like so many other captains when they wished to be heard, but with more adamant than Link had ever seen in him before. "Not while Trinity is still in there. We leave now, she dies, the same way Apoch and Switch did. That's not going to happen."

Ballard, the _Caduceus_' burly captain, wasn't impressed by this. " 'We' ", he grunted at the younger man in dismissal. "You can stay if you want, but I don't really feel like sacrificing my crew and ship just so one person _might_ survive. Don't think we haven't had this incident before, disconnection. Scrap's younger sister died that way; we still have the body."

If the wispy, white-haired engineer known as Scrap was at all offended by this mention of his past, he didn't show it. "You said that Morpheus was helping her deal with this problem, Link. Perhaps the best compromise would be, that we wait for him to wake up, see if he can talk Trinity out of this… funk."

"How long?" his captain asked, still uncertain he wanted to tempt fate for _any_ length of time.

"A few hours", Link estimated, "maybe more to get him on his feet. That new Agent really gave him a pounding."

This was not what they had wanted to hear. "Enough time for every Sentinel for fifty miles to track us all down", the captain proclaimed darkly. "We'll give you one hour, that's all. Don't call anyone else in to disobey orders either. One hour. You got that!"

Link swore he could already _feel_ Neo's reticence. But anyone who knew him also knew that he would wait for his lover to return even while Sentinels chewed both ships apart, just as she had for him. That left him the only people on their own ship capable of thinking clearly and, much as he hated to admit it, Ballard was right about the Sentinel threat.

"I'll see what we can do" he nodded to him helplessly. "Care to join me, Malachi?"

-

Once again, Neo vanished. Once again, she was alone, back in a ruined building, the unyielding chaos that had become her existence. While it was true that both Link and Neo were constantly watching her over the coded monitors, Trinity could not recall ever feeling more alone.

_Calm. Calm yourself. Force the panic down with your will, stop your heart from beating ten million miles an hour. They'll notice. They have already noticed…_

How long would this continue? It didn't take genius to figure out how dangerous it was for the two ships to stay on the surface for all this time. Sooner or later, the Sentinels would catch them, and they'd be forced to dive down, back to Zion and out of broadcast range.

Incredibly, the other possibility seemed so much worse- being stuck in the Matrix forever, knowing its nature. _Stop it. You're just imagining this, letting your mind run wild._

_There is **nothing** wrong with me! This was an accident!_

_Okay, now you're talking to yourself, sister. Calm down._

_How can I be calm when everyone I care about is risking their lives to save me?_

_Enough_. Regaining some extent of control, she reopened her eyes to the devastation all around her. None of the coppertops had seen her yet- there was a possibility that none lived in this area. The melting effect seemed fairly localized now- only objects that came within half a meter of her displayed the nightmarish effects. She could travel unnoticed by simply keeping her distance.

Where, though? There was nowhere in the Matrix that she wanted to go. She wanted to be back on the ship, back in the comparative safety of the real world. Back with Neo.

_Can't always get what you want. _But so long as she was stuck here, there was exactly one goal to pursue. All this time, she had been denying that the man and woman who had been her parents meant anything to her. But what if Morpheus had been right? Given present circumstances, she was inclined to trust him- or _any_ Zionite more than her own mind.

It was then, looking back at her outstretched palms, that Trinity realized that her residual self-image had _changed_. It was not a massive change- only enough to make her stop for several seconds and stare, wide-eyed. As far as she could tell, nothing about her own body had been altered by the chaos, only her clothes.

The trench coat nearly identical Neo's was gone now, as was the black shirt beneath. A completely different one had replaced them both- shiny, impossibly skintight black leather that felt weirdly comfortable, despite it being her sole piece of clothing. Its sleeves stretched far further than before, becoming smooth, featureless gloves that completely sealed themselves together with her hands, as though the leather itself was her new skin. It almost looked as though her previous two garments had fused together, leaving her feeling oddly vulnerable, but flexible as well. (1)

_Doesn't matter, now does it, sister? _It really didn't. The facts remained- there was an instability from the past that had brought her to this point of breakdown, and it lay somewhere in the programmed, artificial landscape that stretched before her now.

True, she faced the possibility of sudden death or disconnection at every step. But then, how would that be different from any other day?

-

It had not taken Morpheus a great deal of time to digest and understand the situation. Even injured as he was, with several injections helping to dull the pain, he acted as though he had expected the crisis all along.

"They're applying Malachi's hacks now", Neo explained in a tired and broken voice. "After that, Ballard's going to make them leave."

The older man's eyes widened only a fraction out of acknowledgement, sitting on his cot- it was the weariness and frustration he heard in Neon's voice that let him know just how very tired their savior was. Tired of the pressure, tired of spending every day on the edge of destruction. He knew the look- he'd worn it himself ten years prior.

"You do not trust Malachi?"

Neo turned away at coughed at that, but there was no trace of merriment. "It's not that. It's what happens if they succeed. We'll be leaving her behind, detached… and there's no guarantee it will work both ways." He locked eyes with his mentor, revealing the start of tears. "Morpheus… this could be the last time we ever see Trinity in the flesh."

"What is done, is done", he replied, recalling their earlier debacle over Allison. "Trinity would understand that this is safest path. And, while you may not wish to accept it, you are infinitely more important to our survival than-"

He regretted his partisan choice of words the moment they emerged. Without any hint of it, Neo completely overturned the wheeled gurney that carried some of Scrap's tools. He said nothing, but Morpheus knew him too well.

He could see just how alarmed Neo was at his own human anger- in all the time they had known each other, Neo had never, _never_ come so close to brutally punching this dark-skinned man he had once considered a friend. The sheer, bestial impulse was so strong it had taken every bit of his will to clamp down on it. It took his breath away.

"I'm so sorry", Neo finally blurted out softly, holding onto his sweating forehead with one palm. "It's just… encoded like this, she'll be-"

"Like a _program_, Neo?"

Just like that, they had returned to their original argument, back at that alleyway. "Yes", he admitted. "A part of the Matrix. There's more than just the Agents, Morpheus. I've sensed them. I can seethey are more than just coding ona computer. They have forms, minds, and feelings of their own. What's the difference between them, and us?"

_We come to it at last_, Morpheus thought to himself in resignation. This was the edge of reason, the end of what he _knew_ was right and wrong. Until he could confirm the existence of The One, he would never have bothered thinking so far ahead, as to the fate of the programs that were tied to it, some of them every bit as intelligent, insightful, and lively as any human.

"I can only tell you what I know", he said gravely. "From what we have seen, all programs created for the Matrix develop greater sentience and personality with time. The enforcers- the Agents- are not an exception. But, the consciousnesses we have met in the past are still a part of the system. Their lack of action is a tacit support for the status quo… but I do not blame them for merely doing what they were created to do. Nor do they blame us for doing what we must do, if they are rational."

"Each of them has a purpose, a reason they were born", the younger man acknowledged him, extrapolating. "Humans aren't like that. How can I consider our lives more valuble, just because their lives have one single purpose?"

"You may do that", Morpheus said, hands folded, "or you may not. The choice is up to you. It is a moral choice, and one that has no past precedent or rule."

_That_ actually got his mind out of fearing for Trinity for an entire minute. It was true, he had felt very little in the way of sympathy for the Agent programs, which would be destroyed along with the Matrix, just as the others would. They could be likened to animals- instinctively devoted to the single purpose they were born into. But that bastard Smith, for all his many faults, had been far more than a simple animal.

Morpheus' closing words resonated within him as well. To Zion's knowledge, no one had ever faced the decision of the type he faced now, whether to spare the world of programs, or what was left of the world of humans. The best he could hope for was to make the decision he felt was best.

In this case, that meant following the prophecy and purpose _he _had been given. No program would fault him for it. _If the only choice is between one tragedy or another, then I will not be responsible for the tragedy that ends my own species._

Saying nothing of his new resolution to Morpheus, he delicately hauled the gurney back up to its correct position, finally feeling some of that dark cloud of uncertainty boil away. "Thanks, Morpheus."

…Which left just one more thing to resolve between them. "The Oracle told you that you would find The One", he prodded Morpheus, placing the last of Scrap's metal tools back in their places before looking up expectantly at him. "I just hope that 'The One' isn't the only thing you see me as."

"Never. I also see a comrade and friend. I only pray that one of those titles will never be called into conflict with another."

"Yeah… me too."

A few minutes later, they stood together on the main deck of the _Nebuchadnezzar_, watching the two resident Operators complete their unified work on a single console. A few more button presses from Malachi, a few more from Link, and the brain patterns of their first mate would exists dependently of the Matrix, exactly like all programs did… as the Oracle did.

They had to do it quickly too, Morpheus noted absently. For all intents and purposes, Ballard's time limit was already up. The very moment Malachi finished his work, he would no doubt run for his own ship and depart with the others. They had defeated two Sentinel probes already, using Bane's ramming technique… but even that only worked when the Sentinels were willing to slow down and wrap up the smaller ship, letting their defenses down. If another wave came, they wouldn't survive it.

"There", Malachi finally said, pressing his ring finger down hard on the final key, initiating the experimental hack he and Link had been tinkering with for so long. "It's a brutal solution, man, no doubt… but we had no other alternative."

Still partly dizzied by what they had just done, Link nodded slowly. "Good to be working with you, Mal. Give my regards to Scrap and the rest; we're heading back to Zion for now."

Neo said nothing to acknowledge any of them. His heart was in his throat. His eyes, now capable of reading code just as Link and Malachi could, were locked onto the patterns that showed Trinity's life signs, her residual self-image, and her heart rate. The body still sitting in the chair before them was far beyond a coma.

_You hang on, Trinity. Stay strong. Give us ten hours, less. I swear by whatever God exists that I'll find a way to save you._ _Just hold on._

-

1- In case you can't tell, here I am describing the differences between Trinity's getup in the first movie and the one that she wears in _Reloaded_.

M: No question that I'm taking risks with this story. I've seen the movies, and my big worry is that Neo and Trinity are out of character. They certainly exhibit more emotional vulnerability than in the films, but that was my intention, to portray some of their weaknesses. The big controversy I would appreciate some feedback for is the scene between Morpheus and Neo aboard the _Caduceus_. Would the Neo of the films, under extreme emotional distress, ever even _consider_ hitting Morpheus over an ill-placed analysis? I'm not sure.

That said, I really enjoyed writing the rest of that scene. I check this site every day for reviews, so please do. Do it, before I psychoanalyze you to death! (j/k)


	8. Eight

**Eight **

-

The first leg of her trip did much to assuage Trinity's fear of discovery, even as a different sort pressured her heart. For some reason or another, the Agent programs that were partly responsible for her becoming trapped here were either ignoring her, or were otherwise indisposed. A relief in a way- after last time, abandoning rational thought patterns further, to melt a hole in a wall or something, was the last thing she wanted to do.

She was on the edge, and even she knew it. One more trauma, one more session of embracing the mental chaos as she had done before, and it could be irreversible, mind forever unfit to return to any type of program without making the walls bleed. She owed it to Neo a hundred times over not to let that happen.

For the first time in twelve years, she had the chance to view the Matrix with greater acuity than a mere setting for missions. Hundreds of men, women, and children caught her eyes, none of them with that spark of acknowledgement that they knew the Matrix's secret.

From the very first sight, there was an invisible gap between them and her, in addition to the one she maintained out of necessity. Each person's eyes would give her and her outfit a cursory glance up and down, and hold whatever judgment they formulated behind closed eyes. Slut. Drunk. Young 'un. Wacko. Scary lady.

The impossibly tall buildings were no less imposing. If one knew what to look for, one could notice it- an invisible staleness, the artificiality, the freaky _symmetry_ of it all. The endless windows copy/pasted hundreds of times to form a wall of pure reflective glass, which in turn was copy/pasted several hundred times… then, there were the intangibles, things she had felt when she was a young teen and could easily feel now. The reason why she had become a hacker in the first place.

If she had not… well, then she would still be part of that crowd milling before her. It took a fair bit of effort not to show a scorn for them that was entirely undeserved.

All this aside, she ought to be grateful that there were no sign of Agents.

Now fatigued in body as well as mind, she finally dared to stop moving around, sitting down on a dusty bench in a subway station. No one else was around, leaving her free to sit and think.

Scratch that, there was one person who would be joining her after all. Despite the heat, the Asian-looking man was wearing an overcoat of the whitest of white. He was young, probably just above Neo's age, with black specs like those used by Zionites or Agents. These were completely round, small, and seemed to conceal far more of his eyes than they should. Save for a healthier shade of black and an upturn at the front, the man's hair was identical to that of her father.

He must have seen her staring, because he took great care to sit as close to her as she would permit. "You are lost?"

Doubting this guy would just leave her to herself, she gave a dry chuckle. "You could say that."

His voice, at least, didn't surprise. It sounded distinctly Asian, both disciplined and wise. "I apologize. My name is Seraph."

She eyed him up, for the first time wondering if he was a plant like the one in the alley. Even then, a mere name couldn't get her in trouble down here. "…Trinity."

"No", Seraph spoke quizzically to the air before their bench. "I sense that is only a false identity. There is another name. But I will not fault you for hiding it- secrets are always kept for a reason."

Surprised at both Seraph's bluntness and ability to cut right to the heart of her problem. The name he was getting at- her birth name- was something she had always hated to think about. It could have very well been that she had secretly hoped that if she never spoke it, never saw it, never thought it again, it would disappear from existence. No such luck… and her father- whatever was left of him- had repeated it to her just a few hours ago.

Her father. Robert Peterson, who had obviously sold out his own people every bit as thoroughly as Cypher had. From what she remembered of him, he was every bit as supportive of authority as she was disdainful of it now. "I felt my other name wasn't appropriate, Seraph. I'm sure _that_ isn't your real name either, or else you have weird parents."

Both of the young man's eyebrows rose in a curious reaction. "Why, then? Is there a difference between you, Trinity, and the person you once were?"

"Smart guy", she gradually admitted in humiliation. "You sound like my… foster dad. He spends a lot of time thinking about how our minds work too."

"I will choose to receive that as a compliment. But if I may ask again, why do you retreat from your past?"

She considered, watching a chain of lit subway cars flash past her shades and Seraph's. He certainly _sounded_ trustworthy. But that didn't mean a damn thing. Even if this guy wasn't a plant, he would never believe the whole story. She chose to merely outline the events that had led her to this point. It was as though the entire station had gone quiet, waiting for her to speak her mind.

"Best way to put this is… I believed in a lot of falsehoods for the first thirteen years. I got hints of it, hints that are glaringly obvious to me now, but I still didn't catch it. I wanted to avoid ever being that gullible again. But now, the last bits of that life are dying, and it hurts inside. I want to touch it one last time to make sure it's there, but now I can't."

Seraph slowly nodded. "A familiar lament of man's change. You cannot bring with you that which you leave behind. It is, of course, up to you. But I suggest to find a way to say your farewells to this past before moving further forward."

She was struck by a suppressible urge to lash out. Her parents were gone, her friends moved on. They all believed the girl they knew had been kidnapped, and likely killed.

But she didn't need to say anything back. Seraph just smiled cryptically. "There is always a way."

It was the longest conversation she had for months about anything but business. For some absurd reason, it felt good.

-

A knock at the door alerted Neo to the fact that he was standing straight up in near complete darkness. "It's unlocked", he called weakly, "come on in."

Zee and Allison stood in the doorway, both noticing his position before he change it. Without waiting for permission, they both acted- Zee turned the lights on by hand, and Allison enthusiastically bowled Neo over.

To his relief, she both looked and felt better. From what he had heard and seen of Zion, he imagined such a place could be very rough on younger people, people who had just been unplugged. No way he could be imagining the unspoken tensions between those born here, like Tank, and those like him, who would always be marked by the dark metal plugs on their heads. That was part of the reason why he had not wanted Allison shuttled off the nursery like unwanted baggage, even if those responsible for her had other things keeping them occupied.

Once Alice had settled down and let him up, Zee felt more comfortable sitting on Neo's bed with him, and looking back at the closed hatch in awkward silence. "Not something you see very often", she ventured cautiously. "Most people I know keep their hatches locked shut."

Neo blinked. He didn't know whether to be surprised or resigned at this. "Do you?"

"No. Link trusts everyone here- not something I can say for myself. He says we shouldn't be strangers to each other, when we got so little left but that. Sometimes he's just…"

He didn't have to be The One to guess what came next. "Childish?"

"Yeah. Probably why he gets along with the kids so well." She shifted uncomfortably, remembering what had brought her here. "Link didn't say anything, but something went wrong on your last trip."

His turn to fidget in the face of the truth now. "Yeah. Trinity, she's… trapped."

Link's girlfriend was still much too realistic, still far too hardened by the loss of loved ones to laugh. But her eyes seemed to dilate, showing her feelings in another way. "That's what all this is for?"

"What do you mean?"

Now she stood up, catching his eye with such a hard gaze. "Neo", she tersely whispered his name for the first time he could ever recall, "you know… that we will never be friends. But I think you need to hear this, and Link doesn't have the guts to say it. I've known that wild girl a lot longer than you have. She's the baddest plug-head I ever did lay my eyes on."

Sensing his confusion, she massaged felt her forehead with one hand as though he was hopeless. "_Trust her_, alright? _Don't _act like she has to be rescued, or, or protected- in case you haven't noticed, she hates that. The Oracle might have said you two were meant to be together, but… if you keep this up, you'll be proving her damn wrong."

For a moment, his eyes flickered with the same riotous anger that had made him lash out at Morpheus. "She's in trouble. If I don't-"

Moving swiftly enough to remind him of his limitations back in the true world, she shushed him with a single slender finger, interrupting sarcastically: "Big tough 'One'. Here's something else I figure- we're _all_ in trouble. Every one of us. We could all be dead tomorrow. So if you want to die a virgin buddy, just keep treating Trinity like a damsel in distress. This is _her_ quarters- _she_ can chuck you out when she gets sick of it."

Neo stared back down at the metal floor, thinking back to the dream he'd had the night before. Trapped in a false mockery of the world, chased down by Agents and shot in midair… he had never had any doubts he would stop at nothing to avail Trinity of that fate. But that vision was no more real than the Matrix itself- did it make him egotistical as Agent Smith to think his every dream a premonition?

"For someone who said we would never be friends", he murmured halfheartedly at the floor, "you're very persistent."

Rising back to her full height, Zee regarded him like she had Link whenever he spoke of the prophecy. "Geez. I have to be, to get through that thick, angsty skull of yours. Just think of it as a bit of guidance from your… Operator."

"Where is he now?"

"Sleeping, God bless him. He never sleeps when he's on that damned ship. Thinks he'll miss something important."

Back to her problems then, instead of his. "Two hours", he said after waiting a beat. "That's how long they said it would take to finish charging. And thanks."

He couldn't tell exactly how much time she had expected, or if any amount of time would have made a difference. This particular problem wasn't anywhere near simple enough to be solved so quickly. Perhaps it would only be after the war ended, that he could look at Zee without seeing accusation.

-

The amalgamation of minds that had once answered to Robert Peterson absently shoved the barrel of his gun into the collarbone of another greasy-haired intruder and pulled the trigger. "Game over."

A few meters away, Program 31B slowly stepped out from behind an iron girder partially bent by a previous impact from the fight. As always, he managed to look more dignified and composed than his new partner without even trying, only stopping to straighten his tie proper after tracking down and murdering his own target.

With his face and shades given a veil of glare by sunlight streaming through the windows of the building- a post office, by the looks of it- Program 67P kicked the corpse aside, holstered his gun and tilted his head in a most un-Agent like fashion. "Question. Do they _all _look like hippies?"

Brown grunted, refusing to look him in the eye. Either he didn't know the answer, or felt that this, like all the others, was a pointless inquiry designed merely to promote time-wasting conversation. Looking around and adjusting his headpiece as if it could mute Peterson's dry chuckle. "There were three of them when we arrived…"

"So let program 57J handle it."

In another subtle sign that he was on his last nerve- or, whatever passed for a program's nerves- in regards to Peterson's strange switch between Agent mind and the irrational mind of a human, Brown adjusted his shades. "He is completing the final stages of the plan for the removal of the anomaly. No one shall escape us."

Right on cue, the third one dropped down right in front of them, on the other side of the window, and bolted. Smugly beating Brown to it, Peterson sighed, then projected himself into yet another consciousness connected to the Matrix, a woman in a blue dress who was just about to round the corner into the Zionite…

The third one, a bearded man with ring earrings, never got to the end of the alleyway. Peterson finished the trip, and gripped the man's veiny neck with his left arm, cutting off all oxygen to his head for as long as needed for him to stop thrashing and lie very still.

_Almost disappointing_, he kept the thought hidden away from Brown. _None of these are Neo, none of them can provide even the slightest challenge. _For once, that may have been a sentiment echoed by both portions of his mind- no doubt Brown and Jones had long since become bored of the same routine. Or maybe they _couldn't_ become bored. In any case, asking either of them about that would only provoke further contempt.

_They_ might have assumed otherwise, but he was not ignorant to the telltale markings. Despite the fact that they were the ones that created him, he could sense the gradual ramping up of their doubt towards him with every Zionite he killed on his new 'job'. Enforcer programs were not meant to emote or speak unless necessary, were not meant to provide unnecessary quips while on duty. Such actions were projected to have an adverse effect on their intimidation factor, the image of a cold-coded killer, the validity of which had already been proven, yet the new Agent had done all of these things repeatedly without thinking.

Eyes locked onto him the whole time, Brown now emerged from the building and strode out onto the tarmac outside. "Mission complete."

Peterson surveyed the fresh corpse strewn beneath his shoes soles with false contempt. "Was there ever a doubt? I see now; the only reason you need me is to stop the anomaly. This… is child's play."

"It is our duty", Brown replied flatly. "Whether or not is it easy or hard, it must be done. It is our purpose."

He gave the same amused sigh as he had before, giving a nasty smile at the lie. "Don't give me that. Much as you would like to think it, you're not mindless automatons. You can think. You have developed personality. There's a difference."

For once, Brown did not have a sharp-tongued response to that beyond simple dislike. "Personality is detrimental to our purpose." he finally managed.

"And when the purpose is achieved? What then?"

It was Brown's turn to smirk at his colleagues' ignorance of the greater picture. "The purpose has never been achieved. There has only been the Reloading, during which we are no longer needed. If the purpose is achieved, the Reloading be rendered unnecessary."

Taken aback by this, Peterson stared at the empty basketball hoop at the end of the tarmac as though that was the final goal of the Reloading. "You don't value your existence at all, outside of the purpose?"

"That, program 67P, is the difference between us. You humans carry on as though your deaths were somehow preventable, doing everything you can- even after you cannot fulfill any purpose- to stay alive a moment longer, to desperately consume more food, more air, more liquid. Because of this pattern, your… predecessor, the late program 66S… came to the conclusion that humans are a virus." Brown did not specify whether or not he _believed_ that conclusion.

Peterson thought that over. Of course he'd never met program 66S in person, only heard of his bizarre fixations from the other two- more proof of personality. Like himself, they had begun to privately doubt that program's sanity before his demise. The 60 series, it seemed to him, had a problem with their programs becoming erratic- _crazy_.

"You forget", he slowly answered, "I am no longer human. But neither am I entirely a program. But both of my halves can think. They are both deserving of life."

Chagrined, Brown looked as though he was about to say something more, but suddenly stopped, touched his earpiece tentatively. Peterson nodded. "I sensed it too. The anomaly has returned. It's showtime."

"Unnecessary", Brown acknowledged that last sentence, already tracking their target's entry into the system. "But an apt analogy."

-

It had taken Trinity far longer than she had expected to find her old home. The journey had taken her though a sea of coppertops, all of whom seemed to know the city in which they lived better than she did- not a good sign.

But here it was. A modest, two-story house with red shingles, such a contrast to the array of gadgetry inside. In her youth, she had always wanted to collect electronics, not realizing exactly why. While each of them was now caked with dust and cobwebs, the assemblage of yesterday's tech she had collected remained, all together in her room upstairs.

She knew she mother had lived alone and died here, possibly right here in this very room. For twelve years, Libby Peterson would have spent her life here wondering where her daughter had been taken, whether she was even alive.

Looking at the cracked windows of her former home- vandalism was a fact of life in her neighborhood- she sagged. _I'm alive, mom. I just wish you could have known._

The power had, of course, been cut; only the sun's rays were keeping the rooms free of darkness. Staring at her reflection- her _melting_ reflection- on one of her computer screens, she finally admitted to herself that nothing had happened. "Shit."

She had been an idiot to think returning home would solve this. But all it had done was drive home more memories of her old life, nothing that could fix her up, or release the pressure inside.

Unable to look at it any longer, she kicked her old desk mightily, knocking over completely and jarring half of the electronics, smashing one of the screens… and knocking a piece of yellow stationary into the dust-choked air.

_Strange_. The memories were naturally fuzzy, but she couldn't recall ever writing the note that was falling to the floor before her now. It looked to be about a page long, and it was written in ink, in cursive writing. She hated cursive writing.

Slowly, carefully, as a thief might open a safe, she walked over and picked it up, held it at arms length to prevent it from melting.

_AnneMarie,_

_If you are reading this, it means I was wrong. It means you are still alive, that you still remember me, and that you returned here as I had hoped you would someday._

_In that case, I should first apologize: I lost hope. Like your father, I didn't think you would ever find a way back. I feared you were dead. So I am so very sorry for any grief I may have caused you. As for the grief you think you may have caused me… think nothing of it. I raised you, AnneMarie, and I know you would have returned if you could have._

_I should also tell you that I finally sensed it. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. The Matrix, I believe you and your hacker friends called it. It took me a while, but I saw it. I imagine that you have as well. If what I suspected is true, then you have already found yourself a calling greater than anyone could have dreamed. So I would like to say that I am very proud of you for that. Robert is too, even if he doesn't show it._

_I know you don't like repetition. So don't need to reiterate even if I want to. If this is your life's ambition, then you have my complete support, and I know that you will grow up to become a fine young woman. Even if I am wrong once again, even if I'm mistaken in any of these areas, the fact remains that you are my daughter, AnneMarie. I will always love you._

_Libby M. Peterson_

_PS: You may have noticed that your battery-powered fridge is missing. I put it downstairs along with your favorite kind of sandwich, for old times' sake. XOXOXO…_

She read the letter over once again before footsteps on rotting wood came echoing through the upstairs hallway. "Trinity", Neo said carefully, leaning into the room. "It's me. Are you ready?"

Once again forcing back tears, she folded up the note, placed it in her pocket. "Almost. Just feeling a bit hungry."

-

The walk to the hardline was blissfully peaceful- no attacks, no one staring. The sight of this street vacant save for dust and cars was one more familiar sight to Trinity, possibly the last sight of her old home. So for once, she did not walk at a half-jog, as if she would rather be anywhere but here. Instead, she enjoyed a slow walk with Neo, undisturbed by any question he might have had about her condition. Nothing melted.

"Patch said it could be a lot of things", he said absently. "Are you sure you're fine?"

"Positive."

"But you're actually smiling." He sounded incredulous.

This realization of course, just made her smile a bit more. "Just glad to be done with all of that. It'll be good to get out of here, leave all this behind."

Neo waited for a moment, then gave it his best guess. "Was it Cypher? Was it what he said to you?"

She shook her head casually, not wanting Neo to get angry with a man who was long dead, even if what Cypher had said had contributed to her problem. "I don't want to talk about him. How are the others?"

Closing his eyes for a moment, Neo pointed at the closest phone line- a payphone on the nearest curb. "You can see for yourself. They're all waiting for you. Even Allison."

"Even _Allison_?"

"She stowed away on the ship. Guess she was worried about you."

One more step, then. All she had to do was clasp the piece to her ear, and she would be back among friends. Feeling reborn, she let Neo offer her the piece first, for once not caring that he was looking out for her. A surge of noise, a familiar rush of sensation, and she was out.

Because of this, she was the first of the two of them to see what awaited them on the other side of the line. What met her eyes was not the _Nebuchadnezzar_, nor the warm eyes of Morpheus, Link, Allison, and Neo.

"Whoa!"

What met her senses, and Neo's shortly after… was a trap.

---

M: I'mglad to have finally gotthe famous'Whoa' into this, just as I'm glad to see reviewers withintelligent observations about the ideas promoted here. Anyways,a lot of conversations in this chapter-it's easy to tell that I'm gearing up for the bigfinale. Filled with both extremefighting and dialogue, it will probably consist of the next two chapters, making an even ten, just like my Star Wars fic, which is sort of following the same format.

Hardest part of this chapter was the letter that Trinity's mother wrote- like withZee,it's difficult to balance her sentimentality with serious acknowledgement that she may have been right.


	9. Nine

**Nine **

-

Disclaimer: The Matrix and all it's characters and environments are the proptery of the brother Wachowski. Done and done.

-

Neo let his arms drop to his sides, seeing the massive space they were stuck in. "I don't understand. We use the hardline to get out of the Matrix and wind up inside another program?"

For them, there was no doubt that was what it was. At a cursory glance, he and Trinity appeared to be standing at the center of a round platform that composed the union of three metal catwalks. All around them, they could see the circular platforms, the bright red hatches, and the familiar architectural features of the underground city of Zion.

_Impossible_, he thought.This couldn't be Zion. Not only was it devoid of the craft, the people, the _dirt_ that made Zion what they knew, the fact remained that they had just been sent here by tapping into a machine phone line.

"They must have redirected this line, knowing we'd take it", Trinity decided out loud, quickly pulling back from the edge of the chasm that was all around them. To her recollection, only two people had fallen off of the real Zion's many catwalks and balconies in the past, by accident. Neither had survived the drop.

"This is still in the Matrix", Neo concurred, his voice now echoing to infinity in the empty metal space. "I can see the code. But why construct a copy of Zion? And how would _they _know what Zion looks like?"

"Good questions, both of them", a new voice answered them before revealing itself. The brand new Agent, the one with a flat top of black hair casually stepped out from behind a girder onto one of the walkways. "AnneMarie… No matter what else comes between us, it is good to see you again, after all these years."

"This is crazy", Neo whispered tersely, immediately moving himself between Trinity and their dangerous new arrival. "Who the hell is AnneMarie?"

The other man smiled sardonically, shook his head. "Geez boy, you _are_ slow. Are you going to tell him AnneMarie, or should I?"

To his surprise, Trinity, bravely stepped forward, refusing to look at Neo. "That's my old name, Neo. And this man is… _was_ my father."

He looked back at her with wide eyes, comprehending but not believing. "No."

Agent Peterson drew his gun on him, the invisible signal for Agents Jones and Brown to step onto the other two walkways and do likewise with their pistols. "So now you know", he said, taking aim directly at The One's heart. "And you know that I don't approve of you, boy. Here, or anywhere."

"This is a construct created in the farthest reaches of our mainframe's unused memory", Brown spoke up, drawing his own gun and pointing it at Neo's head. "It is far away from the Matrix, and there is nothing in between."

"We have already destroyed your entry point.", Jones said, echoing the others as he drew a bead on the other side of Neo's brain, at his right temple. "No matter what, there is no way out of here for either of you."

With all three of the guns primed, no one dared to move for nearly five seconds, the time stretched into eternal motionlessness. Then Neo, once again moving at the speed of human thought, backhanded Trinity in a very subtle way, dislodging her from the platform without hurting her, just as the three Agents fired simultaneously... But that carefully gaged hit did not consume so much of The One's concentration that he would be left helpless while three irate Agents emptied their clips at his spot on the center platform.

In the time it took the three programs to get to their respective third shots, Neo had done one better than simply freezing the six live bullets in midair. Making a whirling motion with his entire body, he instead _redirected_ each of the shots on a divergent course much like an actual ricochet, back along one of the walkways. Agent Brown's bullets were channeled towards the open chest of the beleaguered Agent Jones. Likewise, Jones' bullets found themselves headed for Agent Peterson, and Peterson's were suddenly headed straight for Brown.

The One could interpret each of these volleys as mere coding. The naked eye of any other mortal would see the slow-motion bullet trails curving onto their new trajectory, each one missing him by inches as he spun around like a top to avoid them.

The next few milliseconds of shooting saw the trio of Agents break their previous uniformity, and not in a good way. Confronted by three of their own shots approaching them, with additional speed provided by the being who had redirected them, Agents Brown and Jones had little choice but to bail from the walkways and fall, avoiding an embarrassing deletion by their own shots.

Not Agent Peterson. Just as Neo had seen, had expected, had feared… he could manipulate programmed reality just as potential One- or in this case, the procreator of a potential One- could, even as the program side of his mind knew beyond a doubt what the fake Zion truly was. So when Jones' salvo of three bullets came his way, he did not duck, he did not run. He stretched out his hand, and redirected the bullets again, this time back towards his target.

Before he could acknowledge or react further, Neo felt the searing kiss of a bullet graze along the skin of his back. Either through luck or purpose, the other two missed. All the same, he felt the burn and knew it had nearly brushed his spine.

Peterson advanced, reloading and holstering his weapon even as he ran towards the center platform, the purest of malice in his eyes beneath the shades. Knowing what he intended, Neo met him right there and engaged. No one could truly see or understand the speed of the flurries of punches and kicks The One delivered. No one, that is, except for his opponent.

-

Falling… _What?_

She had regained her bearings just in time. That well meaning push from Neo might have gotten her out of harm's way, but it had disoriented Trinity enough so that catching a walkway closer to the bottom of the fake Zion and swinging up onto it unscathed was a feat.

_Almost like the cliff jumper program_, she had a second to muse before she heard another crash on a walkway further up. She was too far down to see Neo, or the enemies he now faced… but she could see Agent Jones' angry face no problem. _He must have fallen off as well._

Trinity was too experienced to expect Jones to be as dazed from falling sixty, maybe seventy feet as she was. Without wasting a second, she sprinted for the circular ledges that held the hatches, desperate for any kind of cover from the five gunshots Jones had left before he had to reload.

That gave her just a few seconds to think. If they had gone to all the trouble of creating a fake Zion to trap Neo and her in- she would figure out exactly _how_ they had learned what Zion looked like at a later date-, then some of the other features might be identical as well. One of the hatches near the bottom level should lead to the huge natural caverns the city had been built to take advantage of. It would be easy to hide there, waiting out her pursuers until she could figure something else out.

Not much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. By somersaulting the rest of the way down, she managed to avoid Jones' parting shots, and squeeze through the hatch just before he punched a hole in it, prompting her to reply with three bullets through that hole; She heard a dull grunt that indicated she had hit something fleshy.

From here on in, it was up to Neo.

-

Blow and counterblow had since become the only things in the world that mattered to the two strongest combatants in the construct. Every time Neo thought he had Peterson figured out, he would visibly become even angrier, and attack with greater ferocity than before. Blow for blow, telekinesis for telekinesis, he still couldn't expect to compete with The One. But if the Agent's speed and strength continued to increase along with his berserker rage towards him, it would not be long before that changed.

Case in point- for once, Neo was actually _hit _by a sweep kick. By the time he had mustered the focus to stop his plummet off the exposed walkway, Peterson had drilled him with a chop to the gut. He fell, and Peterson fell after him, down for hundreds of feet.

Neither would pass up the opportunity to use their distance weapons. Neo had brought with him a hand-held SMG that he had come to like, but had not yet seen the need to use- handguns just didn't seem as useful when you were The One. But now both men opened up, Neo with the SMG, Peterson with his eight-shot Desert Eagle.

This evaluation of their ammo and weapons, however, was of little real importance. The true measure of what they could fire was not of the bullets in their guns, but just how quickly the two of them could telekinetically redirect those bullets back to sender, quickly creating a thick thread of hundreds of bullet trails between them as they fell, as if in slow-motion. A typical bullet in this exchange would descend on Neo, reverse direction back at Peterson's face, and then loop back around again at twice the velocity before impacting with another hollow-point slug Neo had redirected, destroying them both.

To Neo's great relief, Peterson was the first one to tire of this game. Instead of returning the bullets his way, he began to move them to either side of their intended target, letting them fly hundreds of feet upwards to impact with the ceiling. Still enmeshed in swirling bullet trails, he did not dare stop to fly. He could only wait, and redirected the shots, and wait some more, redirect more shots, and then…

It was as though they had just fallen _out_ of Zion. Instead of hard metal, Neo grimaced in pain as he felt his butt impact most ingloriously with wet, grassy earth, beneath a sky of the utmost night. If he had not slowed his descent down to a crawling rate of a second for every few inches, the fall would have killed even him. _Too overconfident. I have to start taking this seriously, or he really _**_is_**_ going to kill me!_

A moment later, he heard and _felt _Peterson slam into the ground in a similar fashion. He noticed they had fallen into a thick layer of fog. It would have obscured the stones lying in neat, orderly rows through the outdoor area if they were any further away. While he was too distracted to read any of the stones yet, it was far too easy to tell what this second level of the construct was- a graveyard.

Agent Peterson rose back to his feet with a dry chuckle, not allowing the pain he felt in his ribs to hinder his hateful sarcasm. "Welcome to the bowels, O magnificent One. I assembled and wrote this line of the program specifically for you. So that you can finally come face to face with what you've done."

Instinctively, Neo's arms rose, more than ready to continue their earlier fisticuffs, but Peterson waved them away, still trying to hide the fact that he was holding his side. "Not just yet. Take a look at those tombstones first. Tell me what you see."

Still keeping a suspicious eye of his opponent, he glanced at the closest row. The first tombstone read _Edwin Allister_, the second _Bill Steiner_. Many other names shared that first row, names that Neo had never heard of before, until he saw _Michael Reagan_.

"Cypher", he whispered, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the cold fog, which even now was rapidly dissipating to reveal more of the graveyard. Dozens of rows lay on either side of them, which translated into _thousands_ of tombstones. Thousands of markers for corpses.

Peterson tilted his head, offering a small, self-satisfied grin. "You're catching on. Bill Steiner was one of the guards you shot during your little escapade to rescue Morpheus. You killed Edwin Allister when you single-handedly defeated that police blockade a few days ago. Look at the other side, Neo."

He did so involuntarily. The names were all lined up before him, this group even larger than the first. _Hammond, Skinner, Stephens, West, Sazaki_… and _AnneMarie Peterson._

"That is the last tombstone I wrote", Peterson explained, now looking at the false grave himself, sounding hollow. "I didn't want to admit it, I hoped it would never come to pass… but now I know- the girl I raised and loved more than life itself is gone."

His entire body going rigid, Neo wheeled to face the Agent, not wanting to let the wordless accusations surrounding them sink in fully. "This isn't my fault."

Peterson's eyebrows rose. "Oh? Then whose fault is it? Young men like you… you tell yourself it couldn't be helped, that it was all for a cause. Now I've given you the opportunity to face up to your crimes. How would their families view you, I wonder?"

Feeling each accusation like the gunshot from earlier, Neo helplessly looked back at rows of tombstones. They seemed even more numerous than before, lines of the dead stretching into infinity. In life, they had all been pre-placed under that insulting label of 'coppertop', that seemed to make them less than human… and _he_ had killed every one of them.

"Never mind", Peterson said, the fury he'd unleashed before now rising in his voice, building up to one final rush, "I already know that. Because you and Morpheus are the ones who took AnneMarie away from me, I can seewhat you _are_."

No time to dwell further on it- anyone with a brain could tell Peterson was gathering his strength- his pure unrestrained hatred of Neo- to attack again. No more fog, just an endless horizon, invisible in the night. "I'm not a murderer. I am The One."

He gave a barely perceptible nod, and more obvious sneer. "The One prophesied to either save… or kill the world and all its people… unless I kill you first!"

Moving with enough energy so as to glide, they clashed once more in the absolute center of the graveyard, directly in front of the grave of AnneMarie. After only a half a minute of frenzied punching, kicking, blocking, and dodging, Agent Peterson was sent sprawling along the ground for meters, leaving a great furrow in the moist earth. To The One's great surprise, he rose up out of it almost instantly, as if nothing had happened, and, moving faster than thought, knocked his opponent an even greater distance, to crash into one of the larger stones.

_Scraped through to my ribs. **Damn.** That really hurt. _Dragging himself from the ruin, he could not regain his bearings fast enough to deal, and simply leapt to the sky to avoid Peterson's mad charge. Without missing a beat, the crazed program did the same, just in time to exchange another sequence of rapid-fire Kung Fu, this time in midair. Both men dropped back to the ground as one, hitting it with one knee and arm to absorb the impact, at the exact same moment.

_This guy is good. Either the machines gave him the best upgrades I've ever seen, or he's just running on adrenaline. _Actually _panting_ now, he nonetheless managed to fight the pain of both the physical blows and the mass of graves all around him, stood back up before Peterson did.

Up, and once again moving at speeds Neo had previously thought were his domain alone, the crazed Agent now kicked another one of the graves- the fake tombstone of Michael Reagan- directly at Neo. As fast as it flew into The One's outstretched fist and shattered, it was merely a diversion- Peterson appeared on the other side, grabbing the black-sleeved arm hanging out so invitingly in front of him, twisting it into a position no man's left arm was meant to assume.

_Not happening- I can play that game too. _Spinning with the velocity of the blow, The One launched into the same midair spinning kick he had use Morpheus use on Peterson in the alleyway brawl only eighteen hours earlier, knocking the man off-balance for only a moment, then revolving a second time to deliver an open-palm blow and sending him flying twenty feet.

Standing up amidst the ruins of an entire row, Peterson brushed himself off, still totally focused on his goal as though his injuries were but minor irritants. "You bleed, boy", he remarked darkly, straightening his tie. "Just like a human."

Out of sheer reflex, he pressed one palm to the lightheaded spot on his flesh to confirm Peterson's observation. Yes, he was bleeding warmly from a spot near his right ear, and it was getting all over his face now. He recalled now how Peterson had kicked him in the face while he had been spinning around for the open-palm blow, and so quickly that he hadn't felt it at the time._ Should be fine so long as it doesn't get in my eyes. Got to distract him while I wipe it off. _"Why are you doing this, Peterson? You were human once."

"Once", he emphasized, busy wiping his own blood from his flesh as well. "My humanity died with my wife and daughter. I suppose that's why they brought me aboard- for that special power a machine can never emulate."

_That's it then. Our emotions… the rage that consumes humans who lose those they love! That's his weapon! _"I didn't kill your daughter, Peterson- I love her as well, every bit as much as you do, or _did_."

Peterson's violent reaction to this shocked Neo. He kicked another gravestone into oblivion, stomping the earth like a feral animal, but the biggest change was the venom and tearful pain injected into his gravelly voice. "Wrong. You cherish the Zionite bitch terrorist, code-named Trinity. But thank you anyway for pointing that out to me, Neo… so I can take her from you as you took her from me!"

Without being consciously aware of it, Neo was up and charging, gliding along the ground yet again, bound towards this… this… _thing_ that dared to threaten to take Trinity's life solely to spite him. He told himself he should have seen it before, in the Matrix code: Peterson _wasn't_ human. Neither was he a program. Instead, he was some kind of hybrid combination of the two codes. A mutant. A thing that should not be.

They both began with their fists, the impacts often connecting with, but never defeating, the opposite man's blows. Certainly, the resulting impacts could- and did- lay to waste everything else in the entire level of the program… but both men were far too incensed by now to care or give way to the other until both were utterly spent.

Far too early, Neo felt the blood vessel that had burst earlier begin to flow once again- a fatal distraction that Peterson took full advantage of. He elbowed The One in the chin at full force, knocking him into an upwards flight that was only partially under his control. Before the younger man could react, he followed after him.

Peterson couldn't really fly, not like Neo could. But being an Agent, he could jump. He could jump quite fast and high, in fact. High and fast enough to give him the hang time to strike Neo's exposed spine dead center, where the bullet had grazed him before. High and fast enough to utter a mad, screaming cry to the black skies, as if calling for _Deus Ex Machina _as his witness, and empty all the strength in his arms into the two-handed hammer blow.

Without even a grunt, Neo fell away from the blow from on high, impacting with the earth below. Slowly, both as a by-product of caution and utter exhaustion, Peterson staggered over, examining the fallen body of the The One, making certain that while his pulse was thready, his eyes were closed with the sleep of unconsciousness. Finally, once he was absolutely certain that his target was helpless, he reached for his gun holster…

…and gave an extremely loud curse. He had already used up his ammo in all the shooting from earlier. Normally, an Agent in his predicament would be awarded as many reloads as necessary, but they were so far away from the Source here that that obviously wasn't going to happen. His eyes danced wildly behind his shades, now furtively searching the area he himself had made. _Still… there must be something around here I can use. Something that can kill him for sure._

After about twenty seconds of looking, Peterson knew what he had to do. _How appropriate, too…_

-

Trinity's strained legs were begging for a stop, a meditative trance, any kind of escape. But with Agent Jones and who knew what else rapidly closing the distance between them, that wasn't possible. All at once, it felt like she was back in the old days, before they had located Neo: _run like crazy, and pray you find a way out before they catch you, because they always will!_

But there wouldn't be a way out, in this case. From what she had gathered from their prior conversation, Robert Peterson and his new masters had designed this construct as an elaborate trap for The One and whoever else was with him at the time. Of course they would leave no exits, no passages back to the Matrix proper. Just like before, she was stuck here… and Jones' footfalls were getting louder with every second.

She tore through more of the consciously vacant limestone caverns, that in the true Zion were always inhabited, lungs aching. Her earlier volley had allowed her to lose sight of the Agent, at least. But now, even as she ran, she caught occasional glimpses of him rounding the same corners. Pouring on the speed in desperation, she nearly flew to the passageway into the machine rendition of Zion's main dock.

She flung the hatchway to the massive outer area open, revealing Agent Brown's coiled form, ready to strike her in the gut as he had done days before. She reluctantly doubled over, knowing that to stop moving was to embrace death, and Brown leaned back to throw her over his frame and out into the dock- the dock that wasn't really a dock at all. It was merely a steel bridge, staring out into infinite nothingness.

_Unused memory_, she thought grimly, seeing it upside-down from her spot on the floor. Anyone could tell you that the Matrix required more processing power than any other program yet to be designed. The machines, being big on redundancies, had enacted a mainframe with far more space than was needed to that purpose. What was lying before her now, and what this construct must have been mere weeks before now, was an endless black void without simulated image, sound, physics, or even simulated oxygen. No one could pass in _or_ out of it.

Of course, that observation was now purely academic. She and Neo couldn't even think about escaping until their captors were dealt with… and hers were on the edge of victory already. Brown twisted Trinity back to her feet and slammed her against a wall in the same motion, leaving completely helpless before the two enforcers.

Then, _he _arrived. While his suit and the blood on him did much to mar it, they could not conceal the telltale signs that registered in her mind in spite of everything: the wide eyes, his hair, every bit as shiny and oily black as her own, that familiar swagger that always suggested a rugged enthusiasm, especially on the rare occasions when he came home for a family dinner.

Jones and Brown, confident in their own victory, turned to face program 67P with a keen interest apparent to everyone there. "What happened?"

Peterson's voice was still unnervingly familiar, but also altered by a kind of emotion he had never shown in his old life. "I did it," he said, slowly in order to get his message's true import through. "I did it. I did it. I have beaten the anomaly into the ground… literally."

Strong reactions came from everyone present. For Trinity, it was like her father had slapped her. _Neo! No. No no no… you can't be dead! Not now, not at **his **hands!_

Oblivious to her torment, Jones adjusted his headpiece to be certain of what he had heard. "You have defeated him? On your own?"

_This can't be happening…_

"I did", he answered confidently. "I made him suffer, buried him down in the bowels of Hell- small repentance for his crimes."

It took Brown and Jones even longer to digest that. They _still_ couldn't believe it was true, and Trinity didn't _want_ to believe it was true. After a long pause, Jones looked up. "Congratulations, then. Your plan to demoralize the target worked, I take it. All that remains now… is to dispatch of the other intruder."

"And Morpheus", Peterson interrupted him urgently, at once sounding like a child pulling on a parent's leg for candy- that was all he could focus on. "We _have_ to kill Morpheus. _Now_."

"Indeed", Jones answered calmly. Behind him, Brown produced from his vest the only loaded gun they had left, passing the weapon across to their new champion. "But her first. Perhaps you would do the honors…?"

"No!", she burst forth. But Trinity's scream of anguish for Neo was silenced just as effectively as her physical self when Brown muffled her. Black spots appeared on her eyes from lack of oxygen- she could only watch her father take the Desert Eagle in his hand, suddenly looking considerably less confident.

In fact, she could have sworn he was sweating- something that Agents never did. "It's your weapon, 31B", he finally answered. "You go ahead. Finish it."

Jones' civil, but displeased tone made it perfectly clear just much of a wrong answer that was. "Consider it, if you will, a final test of your loyalty, _Mr. Peterson_."

Five seconds of procrastination later, Brown gave an exasperated sigh. "Just pull the trigger, program 67P, and we can leave this stinking hovel behind us. Your purpose will be fulfilled."

At first, those words seemed to hit home- he pointed the gun barrel straight at Trinity's heart, very slowly applying pressure to the trigger. Then, his arms simply slumped to either side, as though his strength had leaked from them. "No. She's no threat to us, or our world. The anomaly is gone. She only murdered because Morpheus brainwashed her."

"What would you have us do, then?" Jones said, tilting his shades to reveal his eyes, so that Peterson and Trinity could both see just how very pissed off he was getting. "Do you deny that you have always hoped we could duplicate the process we used to create you?"

Peterson was looking more nervous by the second. "No, I-"

"You forget- we own your body and mind. You can hide nothing from us, Mr. Peterson. That is exactly what you had hoped we would do to her."

"The process will _not_ be repeated", Brown echoed his harsh sentiment in that familiar way they had once known at all times. "You destroy her now, or we eliminate you both. It is that simple. Make your choice."

All at once, Peterson looked very tired and breathy- as though defeating Neo had drained all his energy away through his drooping arms. While he still kept the gun trained on the young woman who shared his blood, he seemed less and less certain of which choice to make.

As for Trinity, the wait was an exercise in the most difficult of restraint. If what this Agent had said was true- if he had truly buried The One, then the least she owed Neo was to kill Peterson in return. But a large part of her also knew that the slightest movement would invite Brown and Jones to kill her themselves; and they were certainly not paralyzed by emotion as their colleague was.

_Okay. Three seconds. I'll nail Jones and dodge back to the hatch. Hopefully they won't be too willing to risk-_

Before she could swing her own desperate plan into action, however, Peterson's head shot up along with his arm… to his right. Eyes closed, he shot Agent Brown directly through the chest. Before the impossibly loud gunshot finished echoing in the massive metal dock, Brown had dropped to the floor and disappeared.

As wicked fast as he was, Peterson had not turned around fast enough to shoot Jones as well. Jones, the program who had always been his greatest critic, reacted with the same kind of snap-kick Brown had used countless times to knock a gun from a Zionite's hands. Instead of doing so, it impacted on Peterson's outstretched arm, the blow knocking him a ways back on his feet, nonetheless.

Trinity, at least, had never heard Jones- or _any_ program- speak with such rabid anger suffusing their voice and manner. "As I thought. We were beyond illogical to help you for a _microsecond_, Mr. Peterson! We gave you the chance to surpass your species, we altered your mind and body… but inside, you have always been the same _stinking_, **sweaty**, wad of walking, talking MEAT as the rest of them!"

Not bothering to answer, Peterson ineffectually emptied all that remained of his clip- from the heavy Desert Eagle that had originally belonged to Brown- at Jones, and then closed for fisticuffs. No longer stunned by fear of death, but by awe of the display before her, Trinity watched, as they both erupted into action atop the dock's main walkway.

Should she help him? _Could _she? Whatever incredible strength Peterson had used to defeat Neo had obviously gone on holiday- so far, he was the clear loser in the battle. Still showing signs of his distaste for the machines' betrayer, Jones now directed a wide kick at Peterson's gut and knocked him sprawling into the railing.

That was the railing of _Zion_'s primary walkway. Which meant that a fall from there would end at the very bottom of the city. The black void of unused memory yawned wide beneath them as Jones slowly approached, each footfall clanging on the ductile metal. "The fault is ours. The Omnior protocol is as defective as we initially suspected. Two different minds, sharing one body… was there any doubt that you would eventually be driven insane by it?"

Trinity saw a haunted look in Peterson's eyes- Jones' last statement had definitely caught his attention. "Wh-what did you say?"

And then, at a patch of metal reflected in all the shades of those present, the chaos Trinity thought she had overcome manifested itself once again. The bare metal warped and curdled along with the gate, making it impossible for any craft to leave even if this was the true Zion.

"So it is", Jones sneered nonchalantly. "Two diametrically opposed thought patterns, tearing each other apart by merely coexisting, destroying the very brain they inhabit. You're inherently disposable, Mr. Peterson. As we had always feared, you have gone completely… well, humans prefer the term 'mad'. Apparently, it runs in the family."

The realization hit her like an EMP blast. _He_ was responsible for the chaos that had appeared now. _He _was the one who had allowed the stress- hurting him as much as it had her- to gradually chew away as his mental well-being. Now, that same effect was obviously getting even worse as Peterson rose up in front of the dock rail, crushing his shades underfoot to reveal twitching eyes that had lost a great deal of their black.

"**YOU**" he whispered violently, his thunderous voice cracking as though his mind was already frying itself even faster. "_You_ knew I was doomed all along, whether I won or lost. You _knew_!"

Across from him, Jones simply nodded. "From the moment you accepted our proposal, it was… inevitable."

Again surprising both Jones and Trinity, he let loose some kind of cross between an animal screech and the scream of a human caught between agony and madness. The reckless blows he rained down upon Jones now were neither aimed nor skillful. All they did was force him to back up and throw up a weak guard, too busy warding off the rush to notice that the sole remaining gun in the construct had now changed hands.

Trinity clipped him with a shot to the left hip as he was dodging backwards. Her leg was twisted, but her aim was lethal as ever- Jones' injured hip impacted with the rail a second later, and the very last shot in the gun took him in the temple, bowling his form over it and off the walkway into the black void darker and more alone than the depths of space. He was gone.

Which left just two, silhouetted against that same void, neither able to hide their doubt or their exhaustion from the other. Trinity dropped the hammer of Brown's gun one more time to make certain she was correct about the clip being empty, then tossed it over the side after Jones' body.

Of course, she could not forget what Peterson had said about having killed Neo- not for a microsecond. But her lungs and throat could not manage any sort of a spiteful reply to the adult who shared her hair color, memories and blood.

_Don't be stupid. That man was your father in the Matrix, not in reality. Every coppertop gets cloned from a tube, not from a human. You only think you remember him._

Across the way, Agent Peterson seemed no less haggard, no less doubtful of everything that had come before. He broken all discipline, had killed his colleagues while in the field. Treason. That was it was called in the armed forces he had grown up in. No doubt the machines had far harsher means to deal with treachery from one of their own.

Everything. He had lost everything but his mind and body. If Agent Jones was telling the truth- and he had no reason to suspect otherwise- he was about to lose even that. Even AnneMarie backed away from him, and from the warped code he was creating by merely existingwith wide, alert eyes, ready to offer some kind of struggle if he decided to kill her as well, leaving him completely alone here.

"You touch me", she waswarning him dangerously, "and I swear I'll kill you."

Under other circumstances, he would have laughed that off as an idle threat. Now, he didn't even have the energy to give his usual chuckle over the irony of it; AnneMarie was threatening a person doomed to die. _Come to think of it, she is doomed herself, trapped here forever._

_But_, his head suddenly snapped up with the realization. _I can prevent that, at least._

Abandoning any pretense in his speech or actions of being even remotely stable, he finally spoke to her. "Come with me, AnneMarie. I will save you from this place. Yes."

Making it obvious that she hated him outright, she pulled back as best she could on her bad leg. "Not a chance."

Then she gasped- he had risen up again, suddenly filled with a new purpose to replace the one that he had lost along with Neo. Even on a good day, even with his brain broken as it was, she would never be able to resist him taking her now.

"Yes, yes. That's right." he murmured, speaking sinuously both to himself and to the injured woman his black-suited form now loomed over like a predator. "I am going to _save_ you, AnneMarie. Yes… You'll be with mother again, yes... Don't cry… Everything is going to be all right from now on, safe, oh yes, you'll see…"

-

'We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?' -N. Bates

---

M: Amazing how different this chapter seemed once it was completed. I had no idea I had put so much fighting in it, or made Peterson out to be so Mary Sue-ish. Still, the last chapter should counter-balance both of those potential flaws. Took a while to do both of them, but the next chapter is already done, and I will post it just after I finish the 'Epilogue' piece at the very end.

Like it? Hate it? Want to see it made a movie? Let me know.

PS: Props to anyone who can tell me how to stop this site's script format from removing spaces from between the words at random. Makes me look like a bad speller.


	10. Ten & Epilogue

**Ten **

-

"Nothing", Link repeated, the despair in his tone audible to even one as young as Alice. "Nada. Zilch. Not one trace of them."

_His frustration is understandable_, Morpheus thought, looking aimlessly at the strands of coding they had combed over in trying to find Trinity and Neo. _After all, their bodies are right here in front of us. Their minds, however…_

He could tell by Link's breathing pattern that he was blaming himself for this incident, despite the fact that had had nothing to do with it. He was undoubtedly berating himself over and over in his mind, just as Trinity had. Unsure of how to let him know what he felt, Morpheus walked over to the far left bank of screens and placed his injured arm on Link's shoulder.

"The hardline was obviously redirected", he spoke in absolute certainty. "Perhaps they were waiting for us?"

As if imitating Link, Allison now shook her head stressfully, looking at the screen. "They're not here."

For the first time, Morpheus now faced the girl Neo had beaten himself up over so much for accidentally freeing. Thankfully, they had found her some decent items to wear- while the light blue priest robes seemed a bit too big, they had kept her warm even while stowing away in the Nebuchadnezzar's cold metal storage lockers. Now she was here and aware of the situation.

_Perhaps_, he considered as a strange feeling took him, _a bit more aware in some ways. _"Alice, who is 'they'?"

The tremble in her frame and voice could not have possibly been in regards to their lost first mate and savior, both of whom she liked immensely. "The _bad_ men. The ones that watch you every night."

_Of course. _"Link, check to make sure; are there any enforcer programs anywhere in the Matrix right now?"

A few keystrokes on his newest gadget later, Link looked even more confused. "None, sir. Not a trace of any of 'em. Either they're sitting still doing absolutely nothing at the moment, or they're offline-"

"-They _never_ go offline, Link. They are forced to remain there at all times."

"Yes sir. So that means…?"

Despite their peril, Morpheus smiled. "Which means they're not there. They're somewhere else. Good work, Alice. Link? Try a new search- look for programs in the machine mainframe _besides_ the Matrix."

For the longest time, the only sound on the entire ship was the clattering of Link's keyboard. Katakana numerics flew here and there, which only Link could fully grasp.

Of course, Morpheus knew a great deal of it. He had to. The initial idea of the Matrix when encountered by hackers would be that of a giant database encoded in binary, the most common computer language. But the Source's mainframe, for all its incredible power supplied to it by several thousand of the very beings it enslaved, could not possibly create a massive, complex, fully three-dimensional world out of sheer binary encoding.

So after a nondescript time period, they had settled on Katakana coding. Instead of merely one and zero, a texture or rule could be composed of _any_ number _between_ one and zero. In this way, just a few lines could suffice for a single object, and leave plenty of empty memory within the mainframe besides.

It was this portion of empty memory that Link now searched. Gradually, the streams of familiar green code thinned out and became fewer, drizzled off like water until the three of them were looking at a black void, only occasionally interrupted by very brief flashes of green.

A single blindingly quick stream of code, moving almost too fast for any eye to track, ripped down the middle of Link's screens like a lightning bolt. "Enforcer program", he said, managing to speed-read it when Morpheus could not. "And it's moving in empty memory. You don't think-"

"I don't think Link, I know. Neo just did it again." As if to prove his theory, another nearly identical stream shot through their viewer apparatus, no doubt bound for a rude awakening back at the Source of all programs after being 'killed'.

"That leaves one, right?", Alice asked, unsure how to be of use now that her own intuitive abilities were no longer needed. Like the children they had seen at the Oracle's haven, she did not read the code- she simply felt it. "There's always been three of them."

"True", Link nodded, bemused. "One left- probably that new one that beat the shit out of… um, you, sir."

"Link. The name of a thing is often it's most unique factor, and should be cherished as such."

"Yes, sir. Hold on… think I've found the place."

Once again, the code blossomed before their eyes, albeit less dense than the Matrix even in the very center of it. It quickly translated in Link's eyes into something metallic- and eerily familiar.

"That's my home", he gasped, for once not caring about dignity in front of Morpheus. "That's Zion!"

"No it isn't", Morpheus contended. "Just another illusion."

"Yeah, you're right. Only one bit of code that's actually moving. It's the third enforcer program, sir. He's at the dock walls, barely moving.."

"Peterson", Morpheus whispered as one would a curse. "What about Trinity? What about Neo?"

-

"What's it like, Neo?"

The sun, as befit its purpose, was now beginning to crawl beneath the line of buildings ahead of the balcony. In truth, he could not remember how he had gotten here or exactly where _here_ was, only that he felt tired, and in the good kind of way.

Standing up from the summer lawn chair, stretching, he crossed over to where Trinity was standing, also watching the sun retreat from them. He was slightly ashamed at how fast he noticed they were both wearing the absolute minimum of summer wear, despite the fact that there wasn't a pool in sight for miles even up at the top of… whatever building this was. Did they own this place?

"Being The One, I mean", she finished casually as he leaned on the rail, allowing her to lean on him in turn. He couldn't quite remember ever hearing her sound so relaxed, but it was pleasing, and really, what else mattered?

"Um, well", he said, trying to put aside this odd reverie of bliss for more descriptive thinking, "it's like… being a kid. A baby, more like."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Hard to picture, I know. It was like being amazed at your own arms and legs, how they can move things. Only, in this case, the _things_ are programs. That's what it's like." He tried concentrating, trying to stretch the entirely new sense he had only found in himself months before, but here, in this place, it seemed that much harder to do so.

Trinity's eyes shone unnaturally. "I wish we could be like this forever. But not yet."

"What do you mean? We're here, aren't we?"

But she shook her head, swaying its reflective black hair sadly. "No. It's not your time yet, Neo. You… have to wake up now."

"What?"

There was no doubt in his mind that the entire setup was mirroring his mind- the very moment Neo remembered _where _he was, and exactly _what _he had been doing before, every bit of the image faded to darkness, including Trinity.

_It wasn't real. Just your imagination. At least it was better than the other dreams about her I've been having._

Darkness all around. It smothered him completely, began to choke him before he decided upon a firm NO. Desperation and a slightly ironic sense of claustrophobia sped up his ascent out of the ground.

He hovered in midair for a while, trying to get his bearings. He had erupted from the suffocating earth he had been buried in, only to see nothing but blackness all around, and clay beneath his feet.

_Dumbass. Don't look at it like that, look at it like coding._

Once again diving into that special sense, which he knew now was merely a child's experimentation- the prelude of power to come- he saw the entire exterior of the fake Zion, encoded.

It was an oval metal sphere, save for the rounded bottom of dirt he had dug himself out from. The caverns, feeding into Zion's primary dock in a contrast to the real thing, were also hidden by metal. The area he and Trinity had been trapped in, and the area Peterson had attacked him with his own sins, were both inside that sphere.

Abruptly, the stirring of live code caught his attention. _Someone alive at the dock. Who? Hope its Trinity._

The exterior was a surreal little flight, even if one had already made the leap of thinking to consider flying as 'real'. Clearly, this place had been a rush job- portions of the metal were sticking out into space unfinished, and early on he saw several caverns from the Zion underground that led out into nowhere. Of course this part is unfinished. Why bother? The important things were on the inside, the areas made solely to disorient and demoralize The One- more in the way of psychological warfare than he had guessed a machine capable of.

To some extent, he realized, they weren't capable of it. That had to have been Peterson's idea, confronting him with those graves and the fake Zion, giving himself every possible edge in their fight.

The new Agent, whose code now awaited him at the dock as he approached it from the outside, easily bursting through the dock walls. The whole 'superman routine' never failed to take his breath away. Neither did fearing for his lover, which he also did now.

Peterson didn't seem as surprised as Neo would have guessed. He had buried him in a graveyard with his own bare hands only moments ago, after all. While he did say "Impossible", there was little emotion or will behind the denial. It was easy to see that all that malice and animation he'd had before was drained out of him now. If it came down to fighting again, Neo did not expect much difficulty- Peterson looked like he could barely stand.

Wasting no time, Neo landed running on the walkway, getting close enough to see despair in the other man's eyes. "Where's Trinity?"

The name seemed to perk him up a bit; now he looked straight into Neo's eyes. "Have you ever experienced this feeling, boy? Knowing you are doomed?"

"I don't care. Where is she?"

Peterson regained another fraction of his composure, taking a deep breath exactly like the one his offspring always took before undergoing the cliff jump program. "Gone."

A sick chill ran through him. "No way. Impossible."

"Well", Peterson replied, actually smiling at Neo's pain. "You're the anomaly. You tell me. Do you sense her anywhere in this place? Anywhere in the Matrix?"

He stood like a statue, anger and grief rushing through his mind like an ocean wave as realized that neither program harbored her RSI anywhere at the moment.

"I see now", the hated Agent was continuing, "you truly do love her, as she does you. She reacted the exact same way when I said that you were dead, although I was mistaken on that account. Everything I've done has now come to nothing…"

_Trinity. Gone. No, no, no! I won't let that dream come true!_

He could no longer respond to this in words. The ocean wave had so overloaded his mind that for the moment, putting forth the mental effort to speak intelligibly was beyond him.

Attacking the man responsible for it however, was not.

-

Agent Peterson made no movement to stop him, either too tired or too depressed by his failures or both to resist. Even if he had been in full possession of his wits and power, he could never have held this back- the very first punch sent him crashing through the metal wall and into the natural caverns of Zion.

Outpacing all other things that flew, Neo followed him through the cave with a wild light in his eyes, then blasted Peterson out of the caves- destroying them in the act- and back into the metal hollow they had first arrived in with his second hit. Something crashed, and suddenly the left side of his head felt _huge_.

_Righteous anger at the loss of the loved_, the older man was still able to muse in his damaged brain. _The resource unique only to humans, which they created me to harness. It makes me very strong indeed... but it makes the anomaly an unstoppable machine of destruction which nothing can stop. He is become a mad God._

A third hit from Neo's kick, and he was blasted out of the sphere entirely, landing on the metal skin outside. One more hit, then oblivion.

That didn't happen. Neo was feeling too much pain in his heart, to allow him such a quick demise. Instead, he pitched him back into the sphere, creating yet another hole in it, and caught him in midair with a shot to the gut. Again and again, he was hit and sent flying in another direction- The One was playing a grisly version of hackey-sack with him, knocking him far away and then zipping faster than any eye could follow to the other side and hitting him there.

But for Peterson at least, it was easy to see that no amount of wailing on him would be enough to slake the systemic anomaly's thirst for vengeance. It would not end here. It might not even end with Matrix, once he had destroyed that as well.

Of course, by then, matters such as the end of all things at the hands of The One would be far beyond Peterson's concern- he would be the first to go.

-

Another hammer blow. Hit after hit. Peterson's suit was ripped to shreds along with his skin. Yet every attack seemed to only increase the sense of emptiness The One felt when he was lucid enough to properly think. Those times were rare enough, and every instance was chased away by grief, strangling him from inside. While the fire no longer showed itself in his face, which remained completely blank and emotionless, only densest of coppertops would dare mess with him right now.

_He has to die_, he told himself, _Trinity deserves it. **I **deserve it. Put an end him, an end to it all, and no one will ever again expect me to be someone I never even wanted to be._

He could see no limitations left. None. If he wanted to hit Peterson in ten places at once, he could easily do so. If he wanted to crack this program- any program- in half, he could probably do that too.

Feeling detached, as though he was on autopilot, he slammed Peterson back out of the fake Zion, then caught him by the throat over the black void of unused memory. Now, by merely letting go of that neck, he could doom him. _No, wait…_

That wasn't true. Peterson, like the other two, were a part of the system and would be restored no matter how many times they were slain. Immortal as the Matrix itself. _Then complete the prophecy_, a dark voice spoke in the back of his mind. _Destroy The Matrix. Extinguish every last one of the pathetic little lives hopelessly enmeshed in this zoo. Reach out and destroy. Be **free**._

_… What?_

Then, as though he had awoken from still another dream world within this one, his senses- and his sense- returned. He could breathe normally once more, and he realized that this angry train of thought was not his own. _But how? Why am I getting thoughts that aren't mine?_ For they were still there, niggling at him even as he regained himself and rejected them.

He did _not_ want to kill everyone in the Matrix. He did _not_ hate either the common man or the machines with fiery passion. He certainly did not want to kill or rule the people of Zion. This shadow worm- the dark chain of thoughts from another being's mind- had nearly caused him to act upon it in his aggrieved, enraged state. _Powerful, as well as totally misanthropic._

_Use the power. Liberate the ignorant monkey savages from their suffering._

_No._

_Punish the machines that wronged you._

_No._

_Purge both worlds of those inferior to you, and start anew._

_No!_

Neo had no idea how long it took in total, but he knew that his repeated rejection of those malicious thoughts eventually reduced them to background noise. Opening his eyes once again, he could view the helpless prey he now held in his hands. Peterson, injured beyond all dimension of recovery, meekly waiting to die in the knowledge that he was doomed no matter what Neo did.

"For your sake…", he spoke as best he could with a throat as dry as the so-called 'desert of the real', "I hope we don't meet again."

With that, he let go. Agent Peterson's broken body dropped into the black void without a sound.

Which left Neo completely alone here. Alone, standing amidst the smoldering wreckage of a fake mockery of Zion surrounded by a black emptiness devoid of stars. It was the final layer of an extremely well devised trap for The One; the single obstacle they could create that would give even him pause, to try and think of a way past it.

But he didn't have to. If Trinity was truly gone, then he couldn't think of a reason why he should expend the effort to escape the trap. What could possibly come of it? Just more of the same thing. More missions. More saving people who didn't want to be saved. More violence, which for the first time, he found he had grown tired of. Everyone out there expected him to do all of this and more. Here, he had only himself, and his power to reshape the reality of the construct.

"Neo?"

So much for that. The voices had been silent for so long that he had forgotten they were even there. Should he answer?

They wouldn't let him stay gone. No matter how bad he felt personally, Morpheus knew the larger picture… and he was the only one who could make a difference. _This is why the machines consider us to be inferior, he realized, touching his injured right temple gingerly. They believe humans can't see past their own desires and needs, to that of other beings._

But if they were right, I'd give into the pain right now and save myself the hassle. Nothing doing.

"Yeah. I hear you."

"I imagine… the path you have just traveled has been a difficult one?"

"Yeah." His voice still sounded so whispery and dry, and no amount of moisture changed it. "You could say that. Peterson. He said that Trinity was dead."

Morpheus took his time responding to that. Was he really trying to soften the truth, or…?

"It is a fact that her code is not within the construct you were lured into. Link has not found her within the Matrix yet. But…"

"But what?"

"But her heart still beats. Her lifesigns remain. But more importantly, I believe in you both."

Neo stood up. The massive globe of metal coding was still stretched before him, but already the weight lifted from his heart was freeing his brain to think not in human terms, but in code. The dream with Trinity! His senses had evolved- this thing, and the rules of the Matrix, were as malleable as clay to him now.

"Then thank you, Morpheus. Thank you very much."

-

The lights snapped on. The Metacortex building was the same as it ever was. It still had the single bank of windows looking out at the world and it's oblivious denizens, still had the table meant for eight people or more, but had traditionally seated three. Yet programs 31B and 57J both dared to hope that one very important change had at least been accomplished; the removal of the anomaly.

Stepping back from their 'revival' of sorts after being fatally shot, Jones was the first to speak as he followed behind Brown. "It is uncertain", he said in an extremely displeased tone. "The experiment claimed the anomaly was eliminated, but after his defection, the accuracy of his statements is in question."

"We should have seen it coming", Brown seconded him in reference to the experiment which he had originally proposed they try. "The minds of human and program are not sufficiently compatible, no matter what assistance we give them. The Omnior protocol is a failed experiment. It was an error to attempt to harness the human powers of intuition and 'love'."

"Still", Jones replied, betraying his worry as they both sat in their chairs, a bit more nervous seeming than usual- too nervous to even berate his colleague for the error that even he had admitted to. "We can only hope he was correct before his breakdown. If the anomaly has survived his supposed termination and escaped the trap, I calculate nothing else we can do will be sufficient. Our time is up."

_Applications that cannot fulfill their purpose are superfluous._

While Brown negligibly adjusted his shades to hide his eyes from Jones, the fact that the fear was there was enough. He calculated a 97.7 percent chance that Jones was experiencing the same apprehension- an apprehension they were not supposed to feel.

They could not deny it, especially in the light of their experiences with the defective program 67P. No matter what they said, no matter what they were told- they were fully sentient consciousnesses. They only wished to continue existence. But if they could not complete their purpose, then their existence was an intolerable sin.

"The system update has arrived", Jones told him unnecessarily, possibly out of a desire to 'lighten the mood' as their ex-comrade had put it. "We shall see what it offers."

He was also the first one to step aside and open the doorway to the machine line. Intensely opalescent white light shone into their faces and off their mirror shades, casting shadows into the room. Brown squinted, but he could not see or feel any coding just yet…

"Where is the upgrade?"

A meaty fist in the face was the only answer. It was garbed in the exact same gray sleeve and white undershirt as they always were. It was strong enough to knock Brown halfway across the room and into his chair, knocking it over as well.

Lacking any kind of subtlety, the arm's owner strode into the room, followed by two others almost exactly like him in appearance.

Three new programs, recently created, Jones noted dismally, surveying their code even as the door closed behind them. Programs 68J, 71J, and 79T. Upgraded for greater speed and strength than ever before. But… still not stronger than 67P's power of 'love', or the anomaly!

He would be a fool to expect mercy from a fellow J series, and he received none. 71J, the one who had knocked Brown aside, walked up to him so they were inches apart, then lifted him up and across the table, crashing into Brown and knocking them both over like rag-dolls.

"_We_ are the upgrade", 68J said, a bit snidely.

"Failures cannot be tolerated", 71J seconded him in an identical tone.

"You are obsolete", 79T finished dully. No enthusiasm at all for what was about to happen.

This could only mean one thing, Brown instantly reasoned from his spot, sprawled on the ground- the anomaly still existed within the Matrix. They had failed to purge him, despite all their efforts. And yet…

And yet, every instinct in both of the weaker program's cores rebelled against it, and instantly formed a valid reason to. These newly formed programs were exactly as they had been, as 66S had been, when they had first come into existence- arrogant, blank slates devoid of personality or intellect. Should they be considered sentient? _No_, Brown told himself violently. They were not sentient, could not be considered to be truly alive.

They were visibly more muscular than any Agent yet seen. Far more advanced. But they could never understand that brute force alone would never defeat the anomaly. Intuition had come close, and that was something that these three behemoths would never grasp until it was too late.

They had to live, Agent Brown decided, standing and assuming a defensive combat posture. Even if it went against the current orders, they had to live, to find a way to destroy the anomaly. "We are _not_ failures. There have been errors, but they were beyond our capability to correct. Program 66S is no more. We desire only to exist, in any capacity that you see fit."

Then, something happened that alarmed Brown even more than how human-like his rationale was sounding to his own ears; the always-inflexible Agent Jones was in the same posture, making ready to make a stand for their survival!

They couldn't win, that much was obvious- they were both out numbered and out muscled by the new Agent programs. Machine logic dictated surrender to the inevitable consequence of the equation, but they had spent far too much time around humans- beyond logic, Brown and Jones both desperately wanted to live, regardless of the consequences.

Touched by the unity of their thoughts even in their final moments, Brown risked a glance at his counterpart. _For all that has happened_, he thought, conveying his finalwords to Jones without speaking, _I feel it is appropriate to say it has been… a pleasurable experience… to work alongside such a flawless program as yourself, Mr. Jones._

_I believe the same applies to you, Mr. Brown. I only wish it had ended correctly._

"Desire without purpose is meaningless", 79T hissed, interrupting their silent farewell monologue, and already distinguishing himself as the leader and most powerful of the new trio, commanding the others to move in with equal silence. "And you two, like all humans, now embody desire without purpose. Your continued existence is no longer necessary."

Completely in sync with the thoughts of his partner, Jones merely shook his head in distaste for 79T's lack of personality, intelligence, or even a chosen name. "We have only ever done, that which we were meant to do."

Now the two dark new J series programs were ready to descend on their leader's signal, ready to start both a massacre and a sad civil war between enforcer programs that should share the same purpose.

79T leisurely cracked the neck of his new flesh, testing it. This coming battle could only end with the deletion of the less advanced programs. There was no other way. None.

"Then, you are meant for one more thing…"

-

"**For your sake, I hope we don't meet again."**

Those words still echoed in Agent Peterson's mind, or what was left of it. Less than a second after Neo had dropped him, he had reflexively inhabited the body of a raggedy street person in some forgotten alleyway back in the Matrix. He stumbled out of the filthy gloom that had been the hobo's home, still gravely injured inside if not on the outside.

Bit by bit, as though it had happened weeks ago instead of just minutes, it all came back to him. The fight. Believing he had justkilled The One. The crisis and the revelation.

He was still doomed to go mad, if he wasn't already. Everyone in the Matrix or out of it was his enemy now_. Appearances can be deceiving, he painfully smiled to himself. You may have killed me, **Neo**, but it looks like I get to laugh last after all. You're trapped. There's no way out of my construct for you. You'll spend eternity alone with the tombstones, and eventually share my madness in your despair!_

_A good thought to go out on_, he decided. That snot-nosed little antichrist named Neo was locked away forever, and AnneMarie was safe. Anything else didn't matter.

He was halfway down an empty block, devoid even of working streetlights, when something else interrupted his dying thoughts. It looked most like a falling meteor or comet- spherical, burning from reentry, with a deceptively slow appearance of descent.

But Peterson knew it was not that. For one thing, any occurrence of this magnitude would be a waste of resources for the system. Why schedule natural disasters if you didn't have to? The system's sporadic occurrences of precipitation were controlled by an automated program, and nothing else was generally needed. That was the first reason why he knew it was a flaw, and incident… an _anomaly_.

The second reason was something else only those who knew the truth could understand. While the coding for reentry flame effects was right on target, the object was not rock, but metal. Metal like the corrugated sheets that made up Zion's outer shell. Metal like the kind he had used to construct his masterpiece.

He watched it descend, simultaneously amazed and terrified. The coating, while distorted, was the exact same shape as the construct… and now it was being visibly slowed down by a controlling force within the sphere, steered into a crash landing somewhere over on the east side. Could it really be?

Having removed his shades earlier, Peterson now crushed them beneath his shiny black boot. He was right. The gaping holes that had been created by The One's destructive fury matched up perfectly with several perfectly flat sections on this sphere, and it's bottom area was a massive hole where he knew a simulated graveyard once had been. The One had returned.

"This isn't the end", he raised his clenched fist and swore darkly to the hollow meteor passing over the horizon, or more specifically it's single occupant. Then he screamed to the sky: "No, this isNOT the end! I will kill you before my life is over, boy! No matter what! The Source will give me a new body, and I'll come after you!"

"I'm afraid I can't allow that…"

Someone else was here in the alley, behind him. Still partly incensed, Peterson wheeled to find the owner of that voice, which sounded oddly similar to his ex-colleagues, only slow and delicate as a drifting crocodile.

His eyes met another living impossibility as it strode out of the shadows, smiling as though Peterson was one big joke. "Y-y-you!" he stammered breathlessly at the new figure, "you're… program 66S!"

"Oh, not really", the other man answered in the same lilt of mockery, tilting his head to reveal that it was conspicuously devoid of the white earpiece every Agent program- including Peterson- always carried. "I much prefer the name _Smith_ nowadays."

"They said you were dead!"

"My apologies, then. I'm here to repay a debt to our mutual acquaintance Mr. Anderson. You see… he set me free. And of course, being 'free', I dislike being indebted to anyone. Even a human."

Even in his state, Peterson got the message and immediately tried to perk his battered body up for a fight. On the outside, he looked good as new, but nothing could convince his damaged mind that he had not taken grievous injuries from The One earlier.

Upon doing so, he did another double-take. While they had been talking, two others had slunk in behind him, closing off the alley. It might have been just a trick of the diffuse city lights, but he could have sworn the two new arrivals were exactly identical to the first!

"What… three…?"

The first Smith smirked again. "Yes, three. Perhaps if you spent less time worrying about your 'daughter', things might not have snuck up on you so quickly. I've recently come into possession of some interesting thoughts about her. They're not mine. Quite frankly, they make me want to vomit, were Iable."

As one, the three Smiths circled Peterson, not attacking, but observing Peterson's frame as he worked it out. "I'm impressed", one finally admitted- Peterson couldn't tell which was the first. "I had thought that changing my very being to that which I hate the most… was the greatest insult anyone could ever give me. I was mistaken, though- attempting to replace me with a sheep in wolf's clothes- a _human_ - that's a far better joke."

No trace of resentment there. No trace of hatred for two major insults from The One and the Source, but the older man already knew why; Smith's grudge towards both of them could not become any deadlier than it already was. In spite of everything Robert Peterson had seen, it jarred him to his very core. It was like the same hatred he felt towards Neo… except applied to everything that lived and breathed. This program, this malignant _virus_ that bore program 66S's face, would not stop until there was nothing left. Killing him was not a desire, but a duty.

_Besides,_ the still-human part of his mind decided, _this Smith guy likes to hear himself talk way too much._

If he had been at full strength, he might have pulled it off, too. Even outnumbered three-to-one, the unseen strengths Agent Brown had attempted to harness for his purposes were things this 'Smith' still lacked for the most part. However, this if was not the case. Once he was beaten to the point of being unable to resist, the original Smith bent down over Peterson while the other two stopped moving entirely.

"Now it will be four", he whispered chillingly. "If you were going to be _me_… wish granted." Then he swiftly plunged his hand into Peterson's chest, duplicating his previous feat for the third time.

Nerves fried, body aching all over, Peterson could no longer feel the pain of what was happening to him in the dark, only knew that his memories, his consciousness, his self, were slowly slipping away…

-

The elevator's metal was cheap, and agonizingly good at conducting the outdoor summer heat. The young girl knew that was what was causing her to sweat in her tight-fitting business suit- not what was waiting for her on the other side of the doors.

Seeing as how it was the only thing there, she studied her own reflection casually, smoothing the collar and dark red tie down delicately, as if that would help. Every time she cursed under her breath, her business suit would slacken on a frame slimmer and more elegant than the norm around here. It was obvious to everyone no matter how she tried, that her body and black hair was that of an athlete or model, not the employee of one of the top software companies in the world. She didn't have the look.

The doors opened. Her boss, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with it. The joke went that he'd been born inside of it, and while she didn't find it all that funny, it did make her look into his cynical eyes and wonder.

There was more than the usual sexist cynicism now, though. Mr. Caldwell wore his contempt on his sleeve on any occasion, and now he was offering the perfect semblance of a teacher saddled with a handicapped student, asking God almightywhy he had been given such a lost cause to begin with.

"Once again, Miss Peterson, you prove my worries justified", he spoke coldly, staring in on her before she could even get to the center of his drab office. One desk, no decorations. No chair besides his own.

"I know why I'm here, sir", she tried to reply briskly, trying to sound as though she was actually sorry for being eight minutes late no matter how much her mind resisted.

"Do you? Then just for a moment, pretend I am young, arrogant, reckless, and have no respect for the rules of the world, and tell me why you are here."

He drove every adjective home, and did so needlessly. She knew what he was talking about, and didn't see why he was forcing her to go through this routine again. "Because", she gritted out, "I was eight minutes late."

"…And?"

"… Because I lost track of time."

"Keep going. Where were you when you 'lost track of time'?"

Jesus fucking Christ. He really wants to beat the dead horse today. "Because I was at a practice session at my Tae Kwan Do class. And I was enjoying myself."

Mr. Caldwell locked his eyes into her now, satisfied now that she'd told him what he already knew. "Another question, then- is senselessly beating up other people a task we are paying you for? Is it a task that… anyone would pay you for?"

Holding back an exasperated sigh, she instead studied her polished shoes. It was all she could do not to cut loose on his button-down bureaucratic sexist ass. "No."

"One final question: when you joined this company, when you signed yourself over to us, did you ever believe for one moment we would act as though the rules do not apply to you, merely because you are an orphan, living alone?"

"…No."

"Correct, Miss AnneMarie Peterson. While is it not the right of this company to tell you what you can and cannot do, I _highly_ recommend you make achoice in the near future, regarding which of your primary activities- working here, or… your 'Tae Kwan Do'… you wish to pursue. That will be all."

Her face burned the entire way back to her cubicle, so much that she didn't notice several pairs of eyes staring up at her from their own little spots in the warren she hated so much. It always felt like a maze, no matter how many times she traveled it. A maze so deep it might swallow her up forever.

She whispered another curse. _Imagination, again_. It seemed to be a liability here. Here, where all the programming power at her fingertips practically begged for her to get creative and write up something the world hadn't seen before. _Forbidden temptation- Caldwell would just love to have any excuse to fire my ass._

Irritatingly enough, nothing 'by-the-book' was coming to her either. She would look at the schematics, the reams and reams of collapsible white pages that told her what to do and how to do it, and look back at the computer screen and just stare into oblivion. What was the matter with her?

She risked a peek over the wall. Only twenty minutes in, and that included the eight late minutes she would be expected to make up, and her summons to Caldwell's office. She couldn't go for a bathroom break- someone would be sure to notice and report that she hadn't typed a single thing yet. And nothing seemed to be forthcoming.

_Can't think of a single thing. Shit!_

Maybe it was just the office clothes. Wearing them still made her uncomfortable, no matter how much she tried to fit into the gray pants and vest like everyone else had. The tie always felt so tight on her, the pants so stiflingly warm. Maybe the AC wasn't on.

Helpless as to why she couldn't seem to follow the instructions, she hit random keys out of frustration. While she expected gibberish, the message appeared on her screen was too precise to be random.

**Hello, Trinity. Having a bad day?**

She stared back at it, looking from side to side, expecting the instigator of this practical joke to appear at any second. But no one came. Only the clattering of keyboards mingled with her shallow breathing.

**You look tense. Maybe you should take that jacket off.**

The keyboard was still beneath her slender fingertips, looking brand new. This has to be a joke. It has to be-

_**Who are you?**,_ she typed, now beyond caring about whether someone saw her apparently having a chat with someone over a totally blank black screen.

**Someone you once said you loved.**

**_I don't remember anything like that. Is this a joke? Are you hacking us?_**

There was a longer pause now, which only proved that this was a live connection, not an automated messaging. Somehow, she wasn't surprised when the connection trace convinced itself this guy wasn't using any computer anywhere in the world.

**No, Trinity, I'm no good at jokes. I'm here to bring you home. I only hope you're ready for it. Knock, knock.**

---

**Epilogue **

-

It had taken far less time to extract AnneMarie Peterson from the Matrix for the second time in her life. This may have been because the Agent programs were conspicuously absent from their usual duties of interference. It may have been because Neo had been personally overseeing every step of the path, or that the system had done a poor job suppressing Trinity's memories. It may have been any number of things, but once reunited, the two of them were feeling too positive to question it.

Now, one week after they had walked arm-in-arm into Agent Peterson's trap, they both surveyed the puffy white clouds of Trinity's cliff jump program as though they were heaven's own. It was the closest they could come to the true sky- for once, the dark cloud of a crisis was not hanging over their heads. No missions, only Zion. They'd done plenty for now.

"He wasn't all there", Trinity said with confidence when they finally reached the topic of the late Robert Peterson. Her memory was still shaky- she still didn't remember every bit of what had happened at the fake Zion. But she did remember the important parts; "every bit of him I liked growing up- all the fun parts- they were gone. The thing that screwed my mind so much destroyed him completely. I'll always remember my dad, Neo, but you didn't kill _him_."

Legs dangling over the edge beside her, Neo absorbed that view with neither bitterness nor fear- he had dealt with most of what had happened. The rest, he wanted to discuss now. "He was onto something. When I thought you were really gone…"

She actually smiled at him. "You acted exactly as I did when he said _you_ were gone, I'm sure."

"It was awful", he was continuing. "I think I was screaming. All I wanted to do was _hurt_ someone, anyone at all."

Trinity hesitated, looking further into his troubled eyes. "Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable bouncing this off of Morpheus? I'm not exactly Sophocles, Neo."

Now he smiled at the random philosopher name she had picked. She'd hit the nail on the head though. "Never. Morpheus is wise and all, but I'm starting to realize… he thinks I can do no wrong. And believe me, I did. We're just lucky I was in an isolated area. I… want someone I can confide in."

She absorbed all this in silence, then leaned back on the rocks. "Shoot."

"What I think happened then", he decided aloud, eyes closed to view the violent memory once again, "was a temper tantrum."

Someone less serious than his lover would no doubt have laughed, but she simply sidled up on the lapel of his jacket. "You're not a little kid, Neo."

"In this flesh, no. But this new sense… it's something that humans before us never had. Neurolinguistics written in our brains in a language beyond words or numbers. It's still maturing. It might be centuries before we learn to fully control it. Until then, our flaws, or dreams, and our emotions are magnified by it."

He did not need to mention the other example in this case- the warped code caused by stress. Still, a part of this was flying over her head. "You're getting a little weird, Neo."

"I know, I know. But here's the thing, Trin- what I was thinking about when I was finishing Peterson, was just how sick I was of everyone expecting me to be The One all the time. I never grew up wanting to fight, wanting to save everybody all the time, wanting to be famous, none of that stuff. I was a hacker, and all I wanted to do was learn the secret of what was wrong with the world."

Slowly, she nodded. "And you did. Now I know why you didn't bring this up in front of Morpheus."

"Something turned that sickness into hatred", he commented detachedly. "Something's out there, and it almost got me. 'The One' is still immature- and a lot more corruptible than Morpheus would ever believe."

They held each other's hands now, Trinity having decided to take this seriously. "If that's true", she said, "then we should make a promise now. We'll be with each other, keep each other stable, no matter where we go, where we are, or what happens. Promise?"

Neo thought hard, back to the impact of Peterson's false revelation. "Promise. But you promise me that you'll do everything you can to stop that from happening."

"That's a promise", she agreed wholeheartedly, but still possessing an edge of mockery. "Being declared dead is no fun at all. But if we keep this up, that will never separate us."

Finally relaxing with the joke, Neo brushed his RSI hair back. "Good. I also have a question about Cypher you didn't answer before."

"There was nothing. Cypher pretended there was, but there wasn't."

He _almost_ laughed at that. "I was thinking about his awakening. Were you the one to do it?"

A brief shadow dampened her face, but it quickly passed. "Same procedure we used for you, Neo. Morpheus gave him a choice, but our Operator was in hysterics- we had to get out of there now. So we may have rushed the choice just a tiny bit."

" 'Practically shoved the red pill down my fucking throat' ", Neo quoted not without a touch of irony. "That's what it said in his personal logs when I went through them to delete them. Like Allison."

"Yeah. I'll make sure they don't turn out to be similar in other ways too. Besides, Cypher was always an asshole."

"But a potential One, like the rest of you", he noted dutifully, marveling both at hindsight and himself. He _liked_ this. Even if Trinity was not as into the whole 'free-your-mind' thing as Morpheus, at least she treated him as a friend, and not a savior or a weapon against the machines. To Trinity, he would always just be himself. Neither did it make her feel inferior, as their recent missions sometimes did.

"Potential Ones are the only people we have freed until this point", he remarked smartly to her, standing up on the cliff as he came to the last thing he had wanted to try. "But I say no more. We're going to give everyone the choice Trinity, no matter their ability, height, weight or skin. Everyone who wants to be free, _will_ be free. The Matrix is more than a program- it's a different world, the world of sentient programs, that I won't kill unless I have no other choice."

Again, she was a bit confused by some of this. "The programs…?"

"Not just the Agents. The only thing that separates us is that they are all born with a purpose, while humans aren't. That doesn't make either side superior, just different."

Her face lost some of it's seriousness then, once again reacting to an unconscious desire to knock Neo off a grandstand that really didn't suit him at all. "Martin Luther King?"

He grinned ruggedly at her. "A bit. Morpheus has an amazing selection of old historical literature on file. But seriously, Trin, it's a vision I want to pursue, even if the Oracle contacts us again."

"Assuming the 'prophecy' allows it, you mean."

Neo looked thoughtful, even as the truth of the dilemma hit him. "_No one_ controls my destiny. Not the machines, not Morpheus, not even the Oracle. At least, that's what I want to believe."

Trinity stood. "We both do. Because I believe you'll never steer us wrong."

"Beautiful words." The booming, godlike voice came from everywhere at once at the highest volume achievable by _Nebuchadnezzar_, easily identifiable as someone trying to sound all-serious, but mostly failing. "But now you will learn the _true _meaning of 'The One'!"

Knowing their time for serious discussion was over, Neo turned to speak back to Link's jumped-up voice. "Okay, what's the… uh… _true_ meaning?"

"One shot and you're wasted. Get out of there you two- the latest batch is up!"

Alternating a sigh and an honest chuckle, Neo shook his head. "Good for only two things. Declogging engines..."

"…and killing brain cells", she finished the line for him.

-

**THE END**

---

M: Okay, now this is done for real. Concerning MasterMillerLITE's earlier comment about Jones and Brown, rest assured I **never** intended anything approaching Yaoi, even if many other fics do.

The last lines there were merely them expressingesteem for one another- being nearly identical in almost every way, Jones and Brown consider themselves to be the most superior beings in The Matrix. By the end, I wanted to convey the closest thing to friendship two such programs could have after they have spent so much time working together as partners-professional respect-when they knew that they were about to die no matter what(which answers LiMiYa's question as well).

Props to you, to LiMiYa, and everyone else who gave an intelligent review. While I have a sickness to conquer first, I should be starting another work before summer is over. I have two storylines in my head, one of them totally original. Hope you enjoy them, and that I will enjoy yours.


End file.
